Pages tagged “Sufjan Stevens”

Music geeks create something utterly original

Sufjan Stevens propped open the door to the marching-band practice room earlier this decade, and since then several of his band-camp compatriots have strutted out onto the wider field of popular music. Chicago septet Anathallo is at the head of this geeky class, and the band upholds its reputation on sophomore album Canopy Glow.

In honor of Paste’s new Lifestyle section (look for its debut in the Dec/Jan issue), let’s put together an outfit using seven of the best songs about fashion.

Start with the main attraction: a pretty dress. Pick a black one that gets you lots of compliments.

1.Sufjan Stevens “That Dress Looks Nice On You"

St. Vincent's Annie Clark modestly announced that she would be introducing new songs during her 45-minute performance at the Brooklyn Academy of Music's 2008 Takeover. It's the "right venue" to "embarrass" myself at, she quipped. Her statement didn't make much sense after rolling through an untitled track with a wicked salsa beat and "Bicycle," a lilting, melodic shuffle through ornate piano arpeggios. No, she was probably referring to her closing number, in which the Takeover curator himself, Sufjan Stevens, joined her on the melodica for a charming cover of Phil Collins' "In the Air Tonight."

Though he's been keeping busy with his commissioned symphonies, production work and film scores, prolific folk hero Sufjan Stevens has set aside some time-- 9 p.m. to 4 a.m. on Sept. 27, to be exact-- to curate the 2008 edition of the Brooklyn Academy of Music's now-annual Takeover.

Through the long, storied career of Sufjan Stevens (from fiddling with recorders and percussion in Marzuki to his solo swan-rise), the man has played midwife to a huge number of musical acts, both his own and those of his label, Asthmatic Kitty. But these days Stevens is moving away from his four-percent-completed 50-state traipse, instead choosing to return to the spiritual swell of Seven Swans by recording, producing and arranging a debut album for gospel group The Welcome Wagon.

This morning, The Playlist brought word that Eve, Natalie Portman's directorial debut, premiered at the Venice Film Festival accompanied by Sufjan Stevens tunes.

I just finished posting the 12 best concerts I've ever seen. Rather than have them all in 12 separate posts, I thought I'd consolidate the list here. I was recently digging through a pile of ticket stubs I've saved, finding cool concert after cool concert, from high school, college and especially, these last six years since we started Paste magazine. There are some big omissions—I've still never seen Springsteen or The Stones. I've only in the last few years checked off Dylan and Prince (neither made the list and only Prince was close). Some of the best concerts I picked are obvious choices. Others are more offbeat or just personal. But all are seared into my memory; for each night, I stood (or occasionally sat) in awe of the performance that was given. So here are the 12 best concerts I've seen:

#4
Sufjan Stevens
April 1, 2005
Back in 1998, we launched an online CD retailer called PasteMusic.com, and one of the first CDs we added to the site was by a band called Marzuki, fronted by Shannon Stephens with a multi-instrumentalist named Sufjan Stevens. It featured accordion, banjo, flutes and sounded like nothing else I'd heard. When the musicians went their separate ways, Shannon released a self-titled album with a brilliant song about domestic abuse called "Catch the Morning Line," and Sufjan recorded a solo album called A Sun Came with moments of great promise and moments of silliness, like the line from Super Sexy Woman: "She'll shoot a super fart/The deadly silent kind." At the time, I'd have put my money on Shannon. But then came Michigan. And Seven Swans. And then my favorite album of the last decade, Illinois. I had just heard the latter for the first time a few weeks before heading up to Grand Rapids, Mich., for The Faith and Music festival, where I'd been asked to speak. The conference featured Sufjan Stevens, Daniel Smith from The Danielson Family, Over the Rhine, Dave Bazan from Pedro the Lion, Denison Witmer, David Eugene Edwards from Sixteen Horsepower, and Don Peris from the Innocence Mission, all tackling issues of faith with more nuance and understanding than Nasvhille's whole Christian music scene. I'd seen Sufjan with his boyscout band crammed on a tiny stage after Michigan, but here he was with a band that was more like an orchestra. The swans had been shed for butterflies. Blow-up Supermans were tossed around the room. He played "Chicago" and "Casmir Pulaski Day" and "John Wayne Gacy, Jr." while the projector showed home movies and the audience sat with rapt attention. There was a distinct feeling that we were launching something akin to Rites of Spring (albeit without the rioting). Sufjan proceeded to take over the country, playing vaunted venues like The Lincoln Center in New York and The Kennedy Center in D.C. But that night, he was still in Michigan, making a joyful ruckus.

In addition of being the presumed moneybags behind the charming line of Sufjan Stevens performance stagewear, Asthmatic Kitty Records has always leaned heavily on visuals. Not only has the label established an installation at an art gallery in Indianapolis and co-presenting a film festival, but now wheezing felines are taking their visuals to a DVD player near you. Entitled Encyclopedia Asthmatica, Volume 1, the collection is the label's first visual compilation.

Nearly all of the Asthmatic Kitty Records' roster, and many of those in the extended family, make an appearance somewhere on the DVD: from the playful choreography of the Think Dance Collective frolicking in shoes made of bread to the music of Half-handed Cloud, to the lovely abstraction of Sufjan Stevens' music by video artist Deborah Johnson; from the haunting and raw post-apocalypse video fuzz of live Castanets, to the crisp color footage of My Brightest Diamond at Northsix. The label's patent homemade aesthetic is here too, with Bunky's bizarre yet appropriate space alien video, and a selection from Liz Janes that employs found footage.

With over 30 videos, the DVD clocks in at over two hours. While the disc hits stores on March 4, you can click here to preorder it now.

From A to Z, full tracklisting:

BUNKY
"Hippopotamus" (Live, SXSW 2005)
"Baba"
"Space Alien"

CASTANETS
"A Song is not the Song of the World"
"Smallest Bones"
"Good Friend, Yr Hunger" (Live, SXSW 2007)

HALF-HANDED CLOUD
"You Wouldn't Embarass Me Would You?"
"Tongues Possess the Earth Instead"
Think/Dance Collective performance

LIZ JANES
"Jesus is a Dying Bed Maker"
"All the Pretty Horses"

MY BRIGHTEST DIAMOND
"Freak Out!" (Live @ Northsix)
"Dragonfly"
"Gone Away"
"Magic Rabbit"

RAFTER
"Adventurers"
"ZZZPenchant"
"Gentlemen"
"Hope"
"Monsters"
"Encouragement"

SHAPES AND SIZES
"Teller/Seller"
"Jinker/That Fat Hand"
"Can't Stop that (Sinking) Feeling"

SUFJAN STEVENS "Jacksonville" (Live, Calvin College 2007)
"Palm Sunday Tornado Hits Crystal Lake"
"The Undivided Self (for Eppie & Popo)"
"The Vivian Girls..."
"Put the Lights on the Tree"

THE CURTAINS
"Go Lucky"
"Spinning Top"

Related links:
Asthmatic Kitty to curate Unusual Animals Gallery
Review: Sufjan Stevens - Illinois

Got news tips for Paste? E-mail news@pastemagazine.com.

Here's another innovative musical idea from a man who's full of them: Sufjan Stevens is proposing a trade. You send him your best original Christmas song, and he'll return the favor. Yeah, it's kind of weird.

Basically, the winner of the contest relinquishes all rights to her composition to Sufjan's Asthmatic Kitty empire. Some prize, eh? But... in exchange, the triumphant songwriter receives an exclusive Christmas song from Sufjan. The winner can keep that song entirely to herself, like some profane secret between her and Sufjan, or share it with friends. The contest began today and ends midnight Dec. 1, so get to composing, dear reader.

Check out the official "Great Sufjan Song Xmas Xchange" website for a free stream of Sufjan's 2006 Songs for Christmas mega collection, contest details and more awkward photos like the one above.

Related links:
AsthmaticKitty.com
Sufjan on MySpace
1,000 Words: Sufjan Stevens - Brooklyn Academy of Music - The BQE Dress Rehearsal - 11/1/07

Got news tips for Paste? Email news@pastemagazine.com.

Having exercised his literary credentials earlier this year by whipping up an intro for the latest Dave Eggers-edited Best American Nonrequired Reading, soft-singing indie heartthrob Sufjan Stevens plans to speak at New York City’s PENultimate Lit event on Nov. 28. At some point accompanied by veteran British singer/songwriter and Pushcart prize-nominated novelist John Wesley Harding, presumably not during his presentation since it’s difficult to lend an ear to two booksmart musicians at once, Stevens will attack the subject of “What Makes Writing Matter in the 21st Century?”

Perhaps Stevens will suggest authors give their works a regional focus, thereby at least winning the fanship of those in said locale. Illinois, for example, or the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. Commissioned by the Brooklyn Academy of Music to create a music and film piece about the route, “The BQE” will make its debut Nov. 1 at the Next Wave Festival. Hopefully, New York City drivers will finally have a special tune that will cause them to take pause from attacking each other with hammers, and recognize their commuting brotherhood.

Speaking of nonliteral family relations, the Franciscan Sisters of Christian Charity have featured Stevens’ “All the Trees of the Field Will Clap Their Hands” as their October vocation meditation. Reading, driving, meditating. Three opportunities to make your day a Sufjan day.

Related links:
Sufjan.com
AsthmaticKitty.com
Paste: 100 Best Living Songwriters

Got news tips for Paste? Email news@pastemagazine.com.

[Above: Sufjan Stevens]

What do lullabies, rock, and Christmas have in common? Until a few weeks ago, not so much. But following the release of Lullaby Renditions of Christmas Rock Classics, the three will be permanently intertwined, so that the next time you decorate a tree, you will have to think of the Killers, and the next time you attend a Sufjan Stevens concert, your mind will turn to Santa, and the next time… You get the point.

Lullaby Renditions is the latest compilation from the mad geniuses behind Rockabye Baby!, who have compiled an impressive array of Christmas-themed songs perfect for the young child who cannot yet critically assess the difference between Band Aid’s “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” and “Merry Christmas” by the Ramones. Previous compilations have given the lullaby treatment to such artists as the Beatles, Nirvana, and Radiohead, whose “Karma Police” still seems way too haunting for sensitive, baby ears, even when performed in lullaby form.

Lullaby Renditions tracklisting:

1. Hey Guys! It’s Christmas Time (Lullaby to Sufjan Stevens)
2. 2000 Miles (Lullaby to The Pretenders)
3. Christmas (Baby Please Come Home) (Lullaby to Death Cab for Cutie)
4. Merry Christmas (I Don't Want to Fight Tonight) (Lullaby to Ramones)
5. Do They Know It’s Christmas? (Lullaby to Band Aid)
6. Happy Xmas (The War Is Over) (Lullaby to John Lennon)
7. Christmastime (Lullaby to Smashing Pumpkins)
8. Oi to the World (Lullaby to No Doubt)
9. Christmas Wrapping (Lullaby to The Waitresses)
10. Great Big Sled (Lullaby to The Killers)
11. Father Christmas (Lullaby to The Kinks)
12. I Won't Be Home for Christmas (Lullaby to blink-182)
13. Some Day at Christmas (Lullaby to Pearl Jam)

Related links:
RockabyeBabyMusic.com
Rockabye Baby! Music on MySpace
Sufjan.com

Got news tips for Paste? Email news@pastemagazine.com.

Before Sufjan Stevens walked onto the Austin City Limits stage, producer Terry Lickona revealed a surprising fact about the acclaimed singer/songwriter: This would be Stevens’ first television performance. This is surprising when you consider the critical praise that has been heaped on the artist over the past couple of years, but he could not have picked a more appropriate venue. The intimacy of ACL’s studio perfectly conveyed Stevens’ understated, emotional ballads and sweeping, history-tinged orchestral pieces. As he and his 14-piece band took their places, there was an air of almost amateur awkwardness. Strangely attired with butterfly wings on their backs (except for Stevens who wore bird wings), the collective launched into the familiar string parts of “Jacksonville” from 2005’s Illinois, and all doubts fell away.

Banter between songs was kept to a minimum, furthering Stevens’ reputation as a somewhat reluctant “star.” However, he did take time to dedicate “Detroit, Lift Up Your Weary Head” to fellow native Jack White, whose band The Raconteurs taped their ACL performance the same night. “Detroit” was a true highlight of the evening with its sing-and-respond lyrics and syncopated rhythms enthusiastically played by a very talented group of musicians.

Stevens rotated from piano to guitar to banjo, which he strapped on at one point, explaining, "This next song is about a famous Polish American revolutionary war hero named Casimir Pulaski.” Although it was a decidedly beautiful rendition of one of his most touching songs, Stevens showed he likes to keep audiences guessing just as he does on his albums. In this instance, it was the fact that the song’s story takes place on Casimir Pulaski Day, but has nothing to do with the actual war hero himself.

Stevens may never finish his ultimate plan to record an album for each of the fifty states, but there is heavy imagery of American heritage in his band’s performance, with the Salvation Army style uniforms only enhancing the picture. One gets the feeling that if Aaron Copland were alive today, he would be one of Sufjan Stevens' biggest fans.

Sufjan Stevens will be performing free for the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Feb. 5, 2007, when the center celebrates its 10th anniversary. Tickets will be required for this free performance, but details are still being ironed out as to how they will be distributed. More details should be available in mid-December.

Playing before Stevens will be Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in the Center’s Opera House at 7 p.m., followed by the National Symphony Orchestra at 8 p.m. in the Concert Hall. Stevens will play with the Opera House Orchestra at 9 p.m. at the Opera House.

In other Stevens news (when does he not have news?), you can get a chance to listen to his entire Christmas box set, Songs for Christmas, at AsthmaticKitty.com.

How many times has the name “Sufjan Stevens” popped up in the news section in every music blog this year? Yes, a lot. But at least it's newsworthy. This time, it involves a choir: On October 10 and 11, Stevens will have 24 additional members for his two-day stint at Berkeley's Zellerbach Hall.

The 24-piece choir is a portion of the full local group called Pacific Mozart Ensemble.

Stevens’ remaining tour dates:

October
9 - Los Angeles, CA, The Wiltern*
10 - Berkeley, CA Zellerbach Hall*
11 - Berkeley, CA, Zellerbach Hall*
13 - Portland, OR, Crystal Ballroom*
14 - Vancouver, BC, St. Andrews Cathedral*
15 - Seattle, WA, Paramount*

* = w/ My Brightest Diamond

Looks like folk pop dreamboat Sufjan Stevens has gotten over the 50 states project. Now he’s onto something even more traditional: Christmas.

Stevens is releasing a box set titled Songs for Christmas Nov. 21 with five individually packed Christmas EPs that he began recording in 2001. Included in the box set are various novelty items such as Christmas stickers, extensive liner notes and short stories by Stevens and a Christmas songbook with lyric sheets.

The five-disc tracklist:
Noel: Songs for Christmas, Vol. I (recorded December 2001)
1. Silent Night
2. O Come O Come Emmanuel
3. We’re Goin’ To the Country! *
4. Lo How A Rose E’er Blooming
5. It’s Christmas! Let’s Be Glad! *
6. Holy Holy, etc.
7. Amazing Grace

Hark!: Songs for Christmas, Vol. II (recorded December 2002)
1. Angels We Have Heard on High
2. Put the Lights on the Tree *
3. Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing
4. I Saw Three Ships
5. Only at Christmas Time *
6. Once in Royal David’s City
7. Hark! The Herald Angels Sing!
8. What Child Is This Anyway?
9. Bring A Torch, Jeanette, Isabella

Ding! Dong!: Songs for Christmas, Vol. III (recorded December 2003)
1. O Come, O Come Emmanuel
2. Come on! Let’s Boogey to the Elf Dance! *
3. We Three Kings
4. O Holy Night
5. That Was the Worst Christmas Ever! *
6. Ding! Dong! *
7. All the King’s Horns *
8. The Friendly Beasts

Joy: Songs for Christmas, Vol. IV (recorded December 2005)
1. The Little Drummer Boy
2. Away In A Manger 3. Hey Guys! It’s Christmas Time! *
4. The First Noel 5. Did I Make You Cry On Christmas Day? (Well, You Deserved It!) *
6. The Incarnation *
7. Joy To The World

Peace: Songs for Christmas, Vol. V (recorded June 2006)
1. Once in Royal David’s City
2. Get Behind Me, Santa! *
3. Jingle Bells
4. Christmas in July *
5. Lo! How A Rose E’er Blooming
6. Jupiter Winter *
7. Sister Winter *
8. O Come O Come Emmanuel
9. Star of Wonder *
10. Holy, Holy, Holy
11. The Winter Solstice *

* denotes original songs by Sufjan Stevens © 2006 New Jerusalem Music/ASCAP

Indie folkster Sufjan Stevens will be trading in his cheerleading uniform for a suit and tie this fall on his first tour in over a year.

Stevens, whose last tour featured dance routines with his band of Illinoisemakers, will be appearing with a talented group of musicians including a small string ensemble and brass section, opting for sophistication over spectacle. Stevens will perform familiar tracks from Seven Swans, Michigan and Illinois as well as five to six new songs. The tour will bring Stevens and his players to some of the country’s most historic venues, including a September 20 performance at the Fox Theater in Atlanta for Paste Rock 'N' Reel.

Supporting the tour will be Shara Worden of My Brightest Diamond (pictured above on the right), a close friend and collaborator whose debut album, Bring Me The Workhorse will be released on Asthmatic Kitty Records on August 22.

For more information on the tour and My Brightest Diamond’s new album, visit asthmatickitty.com.

Despite rumors to the contrary, Sufjan Stevens has not taken a break from releasing records. He has announced that a new collection of songs, The Avalanche: Outtakes and Extras From the Illinois Album, will be released July 25. Illinois was originally planned to be a double album of almost 50 songs, and The Avalanche is its other half.

Stevens has not yet made a decision on the next state for his 50 States Project.

Track List:

1. The Avalanche
2. Dear Mr Supercomputer
3. Adlai Stevenson
4. The Vivian Girls Are Visited In the Night by Saint Dargarius and his Squadron of Benevolent Butterflies
5. Chicago (acoustic version)
6. The Henney Buggy Band
7. Saul Bellow
8. Carlyle Lake
9. Springfield, or Bobby Got a Shadfly Caught in his Hair
10. The Mistress Witch from McClure (or, The Mind That Knows Itself)
11. Kaskaskia River
12. Chicago (adult contemporary easy listening version)
13. Inaugural Pop Music for Jane Margaret Byrne
14.No Man's Land
15. The Palm Sunday Tornado Hits Crystal Lake
16. The Pick-up
17. The Perpetual Self, or "What Would Saul Alinsky Do?"
18. For Clyde Tombaugh
19. Chicago (Multiple Personality Disorder version)
20. Pittsfield
21. The Undivided Self (for Eppie and Popo)

When Sufjan Stevens hosts a pep rally, expect spirit games, choreographed cheers, crowd chant-alongs, cascading balloons, goofy uniforms and perfectly rehearsed, full-band slams. Two deep into his quest to commemorate all 50 U.S. states (with slightly more dynamism than their respective quarters), Stevens has already had to fend off plenty of naysayers eager to scream “Gimmick!” But the Illinois tour embraces Stevens’ kitsch-gone-tender bent, taking state-fair tomfoolery to new levels of inanity. The results are oddly glorious.

The stage at New York’s Bowery Ballroom was decorated with hand-painted signs announcing “Sufjan Stevens and the Illinoisemaker Choir Pep Rally!” that flanked an Illinois state flag, graciously hung mid-stage. Introduced by a whistle-toting M.C. named “Coach,” Stevens and his band wore matching Illinois uniforms (girls in cheerleading skirts with pom-poms, dudes in sweatpants and wrist bands), and sported giant white bandages, dutifully obliging “Fake an Injury Night.” (Each of Stevens’ five sold-out shows at the Bowery boasted a different spirit trick—backwards day, pirate night, fake tattoo or facial hair, and finally “formal”). Stevens wore a bike helmet the entire show, occasionally snapping and unsnapping the chin strap, and finally pulled off his giant bandage to reveal an actual pink scar, wincingly earned in a Brooklyn Bridge bicycle mishap. The band members, clutching their respective trumpets, bass, drums, guitars, glockenspiels, triangles and banjos crowded a canary-yellow Baldwin piano, their sprawl compounded by a big Fender Rhodes and a mess of music stands. Still, all those accessories never trumped the band’s sound. Filing through the highlights of Stevens’ latest, Illinois, the band’s arrangements were remarkably coherent; impressively, Stevens managed to perfectly translate complex, heavily-orchestrated chamber pop to the sticky stage of a downtown rock club.

Stevens opened with the “50 States Theme Song” (instantly, cloyingly familiar to anyone who has ever visited his website.) His backup singers purr and coo, Stevens chanting “It’s part of the act / The 50 states,” grinning and dissipating any potential discomfort with all the shtick. Despite the earnestness of his records, Stevens is a remarkably casual live performer, moving through his songs with ease and grace. The largely acoustic “Decatur” was nearly a capella at parts, punctuated by a piercing trumpet solo; “Jacksonville” benefited from extra banjo and a crowd cheer of “J-A-C-K-S-O-N-V-I-L-L-E!” “Casimir Pulaski Day” was just as hauntingly sad as it is on record, all acoustic guitar and Stevens’ quiet, devastated voice. Stevens’ encore of Seven Swans’ “All the Trees of the Field will Clap their Hands” (the only non-Illinois song of the evening), ditched its modest banjo origins to embrace a full-band blowout. Given the scope of both Illinois and its founding project, it’s only appropriate that Stevens’ live show is so weirdly spectacular: Be true to your school.

Art of the State: Banjo-strapped songwriter gracefully straddles the sullen/silly divide

Sufjan Stevens is a precocious fella. After announcing in 2003 that he’d devote albums to all 50 states (thus keeping the Great Indie Concept Album Boom churning well beyond the inevitable White Stripes/Shins/Coldplay reunions a few decades hence), he produced the luminous, lush Michigan. But, with a casual smirk, he just as quickly deviated, with 2004’s wistful Seven Swans.

This year finds him back on track, steering south on 75, west on 80, through a spot of Ohio, and into Illinois, a unique, remarkably ambitious 22-song cycle. With string quartets, banjos, choirs, brass and Stevens himself credited to over 20 instruments, it sounds as if his fractured folk spirituality was arranged by avant-Americanist (and SmiLE co-conspirator) Van Dyke Parks. There’s a sweeping, dramatic grandeur to the production—see the cinematic bustle of the title track—as if Stevens’ Illinois were viewed in hurtling panorama from scuffed train windows.

Despite a predilection for the chilling (“And in my best behavior / I am really just like him,” Stevens sings on serial-killer ballad “John Wayne Gacy, Jr.”), the mode of Illinois—as it reads simply on the spine—is playful. Song titles are effusive (and alternately CAPITALIZED), occasionally taking as long to read as they do to listen to, such as the 19-second “A Conjunction of Drones Simulating the Way in Which Sufjan Stevens Has an Existential Crisis in the GREAT GODFREY MAZE.” (And that’s not even the longest title. Nor the shortest track.)

But, mostly, the playfulness coils in Stevens’ melodies—their sing-song natures seeming half-reluctantly resigned to joy—and his jaunty orchestrations, which lilt with theatrical enthusiasm. “I can’t explain the state I’m in,” he puns on “The Predatory Wasp of the Palisades is Out To Get Us!” after reeling off a stylized bridge crammed with Illinois landmarks. It’s typical Stevens irony.

Full of Googlable titles (“CASIMIR PULASKI DAY”), Illinois could easily inspire as much fanatical footnoting as the Fiery Furnaces’ 2004 tangled-up-in-bleeps epic, Blueberry Boat. Occasionally, like the Furnaces, Stevens’ cleverness gets the best of him, and he inserts bits of precisely rhymed Illinois history at the expense of a song’s emotional content, such as a verse about Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas in the midst of the pleasingly pastoral tumble of “DECATUR, or, Round of Applause for Your Stepmother!”

Still, there’s emotional heft to spare, particularly on songs like “Chicago” and “John Wayne Gacy, Jr.”—two of the most gorgeously crafted songs in recent memory.

The intricacy of the record never dulls, even when the songs blur into an alternating pattern of Stevens’ breathy narrative pronouncements and baroque instrumental tangents. If the value of individual compositions is a bit lost, the landscape is open, a flowing anthology of stories whose characters’ dreams and morals reflect freely off one another from across county lines.

Stevens’ arrangements, humor and historical scope all aim for that archetypal writing-workshop moment of weird revelation: spaceships descending on “Concerning the UFO Sighting near Highland, Illinois,” a lover dying of cancer in “CASIMIR PULASKI DAY.” When Stevens swoops suddenly from the detached to the personal, he pulls strange and beautiful fish.

Sufjan Stevens—riding high on the critical success of his sleeper hit, Greetings From Michigan, the Great Lake State, the first album in a series that will devote a recording to each US state—has signed to Rough Trade in the United Kingdom, which will issue the album there in 2004. Stevens inked the deal following his sold-out performance at the CMJ New Music Marathon in October 2003 in New York City.

Rough Trade (UK) will also release the Stevens' follow-up album entitled Seven Swans on March 16, 2004 with simultaneous US release on CD by Sounds Familyre (the label owned and operated by the Danielson Famile, of which Stevens is a member) and LP by Burnt Toast Vinyl (home to Stevens tourmate Denison Witmer).The new album is a quick break from the state series and is comprised of songs written at the same time as the Michigan tracks. The new album features Stevens' excellent banjo playing and lyrically focuses on a mixture of themes surrounding love and meditations on religion.

The songs on Seven Swans showcase an even more intimate and personal side of Stevens than listeners came to know on Michigan. Stevens will return to the state series with a late 2004 release planned for Illinois and will perform live at New York City’s Knitting Factory January 22, 2004.