1) We Are What You Say; 2) A Winner Needs a Wand; 3) Rake; 4) Siamese Twins; 5) Demetrius; 6) Dumb I Sound; 7) Wordsworth's Ridge; 8) Belly Button; 9) Rice Pudding; 10) A Loverless Bed (Without Remission); 11) Godzuki; 12) Super Sexy Woman; 13) The Oracle Said Wander; 14) Happy Birthday; 15) Jason; 16) Kill; 17) Ya Leil; 18) A Sun Came; 19) Satan's Saxophones; 2004 Reissue Bonus Tracks: 20) Joy! Joy! Joy!; 21) You Are the Rake
Home recordings, silly family fun and somewhere deep within, the promise of a good start. Heavy on the potential, drowned out by its novelties.
Key tracks: "A Loverless Bed (Without Remission)", "A Sun Came", "Joy! Joy! Joy!" (I know it's a bonus track)
A Sun Came reminds me most of all about the miscellaneous demo collections you end up hearing whenever artists (or their labels) clear their vaults. Miscellaneous home recordings, early releases under different monikers, obscure demo tapes and shelved debuts that were scrapped - some released officially years later, others surviving through leaks, and by and far aimed at and digested by hungry fans who are more interested in their historical context than actual quality. A Sun Came strictly speaking isn’t such a release - it is Sufjan Stevens’ canonical first album and was released properly as such (albeit with limited circulation, and there seems to be some debate whether it was 1999 or 2000). But in spirit, it is absolutely the kind of ragtag release where you get to see glimpses into the early stages of an artist who is on the cusp of something great, but who's still mainly just playing and around recording any possible idea from the comforts of his bedroom.
That’s not to say this doesn’t sound like Sufjan because it absolutely does. His voice is unmistakable and just as magical as it would be later on, and while the recording quality is a little more rudimentary you can already hear him nudging his way into the maximalist territory he’d claim as his own a few years later. But rather than leaning towards the more elaborate and emotional nature of his cornerstone works, the main driving force behind A Sun Came is the unpredictability and, in lack of a better word, whimsy that would eventually lead towards the sudden stylistic switches, the balloon unicorn stage costumes and the Christmas box sets. It’s also curiously his most insular work: it’s an album so littered with in-jokes, historic home recordings of Sufjan and his family members and collaborations with some of them that it feels like you’re missing out on something if you’re not among his confidants. It somewhat goes back to these being home recordings, and in a very literal sense of that as well. It’s like Sufjan’s writing songs for his family and with his family, and that the rest of us get to hear it too is like unintentional happenstance.
As quaint, and in its own way adorable as that sounds, from a purely musical perspective it’s not quite so. A Sun Came is a hodgepodge of a record - as said, its closest resemblance is to compilations of material not originally intended for wider release, and the picture it presents of Sufjan at this stage is someone who's still noodling around with concepts and sounds more than anything else. The vast amount of hushed folk ballads throughout is familiar territory - and the best part of the record - and the noisier excursions to an almost slacker rock like territory are unexpected but intriguing, and both together could make an uneven but promising debut. Where it starts getting into a flimsier territory are the abundance of interludes, skits and scattershot side paths it takes. Among the worst are the spoken word segments consisting of home recordings of li'l Sufjan and his family, which are fairly short but all quite annoying, and the clear novelty filler like the terribly aimless "Rice Pudding" and the absolutely abysmal free jazz dreck of "Satan's Saxophones". Some cuts are more developed but still resemble mere ideas in search of actual songs: "Demetrius" is like three songs playing all at once with no clear winning direction and it becomes a mess, and the aforementioned Middle Eastern excursion "Ya Leil" does in no way support its near six-minute length. I’m not a completely joyless monster and the lo-fi irony-groove of “Super Sexy Woman” is more in line with the off-kilter sense of humour that makes e.g. the Christmas box sets works, but even then it's nearly three minutes long with a joke that lasts for about one.
You strip all the filler out and you are left with a solid (and noticably shorter) debut release by an artist-in-works, but I'd be wrong to say it'd still be a particularly strong record. A lot of what's left is very aesthetically pleasing - you honestly cannot go wrong with the combination of Sufjan and an acoustic guitar, and simply in sonical terms it's thoroughly captivating to listen to. But as songs you'd remember, they don't go that far - though I'm not sure if it's just because all the clutter around them makes it harder for even the good things to stick. It's not to say that it all passes through without attention: the title track is a deadly gorgeous little acoustic melody piece, and "A Winner Needs a Wand" features a richer arrangement that hints towards where Michigan and subsequently the rest of Stevens' career would go towards. I also have a particular affinity towards "Jason" and "A Loverless Bed", which sound like Sufjan's attempts to mingle with the more familiar lo-fi indie rock sound of the day; "A Loverless Bed" in particular sounds so much like a Sparklehorse song it throws you off time and time again. Once again, enjoyable songs - but I'd be forcing myself to come up with anything more of interest to say about them.
The copy I own actually does a practical disfavour to itself by including two bonus tracks at the very end, recorded years later and acting as a gigantic neon arrow pointing towards the brighter future. "Joy! Joy! Joy!" is a quirky synthpop jam that dresses up the original album's erratic sense of humour into a far more fun form (it even has a spoken word segment reminiscent of the main album in the middle, and it works). "You Are the Rake" on the other hand is a 2004 re-recording of "Rake", keeping the original composition's core intact but presenting a more confident performance and arrangement, with a little polish on it and a small choir behind Sufjan. They're the best two songs on A Sun Came, and they're the bonus tracks. Which sounds bad to even say.
But that's just how it is, and the fact that the two bonus tracks are dated later than the rest of the record is more or less why they’re better - because Sufjan got better and he started to focus on creating actual records. I appreciate home demos, silly goof-offs never intended to see the light of day and lo-fi jams from acts I like with a glimmer of intrigue like any fan would, but I don’t generally get a lot of actual musical excitement out of them - and A Sun Came is a collection of such things, even if not openly so. Calling it sloppy or rudimentary in comparison to Sufjan’s later works is beside the point, because apart from the few most obvious throwaways you can definitely hear the intent behind the music and Sufjan’s obviously talented by this point already. From a wider musical perspective his aim’s still a little wobbly though, and as a result the album fires its shots all over the place and you’re left searching around for pieces of shrapnel of something solid. Listening to A Sun Came is akin to browsing through a photo album of childhood photos, with both all the potential and the embarrassments right there on display.
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