what do people like about sufjan stevens? and jens lekman, what the hell?

Well, not his SINGING (or lack thereof), that's for sure. (At least I hope to hell not.) Sometimes the background music is quite pretty, though; sometimes almost beautiful. And the lyrics can intrigue if you read the lyric sheet; a shame the dude has no ability whatsoever to put them over. Oh well.

btw sufjan is HOTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT
who knew?

I can actually answer the second half of this now: why people like Jens Lekman = the same reason people like Charlie Brown

the more music sufjan releases the less i understand his appeal. it's always the same lush, highly orchestrated, inoffensive, soft sound. when you have heard one sufjan song you have heard them all. when he covers bob dylan he grinds all the edges, kills all the rough charm to turn it into his fabric softening music. what a wimp.

charlie brown the character? or peanuts the comic strip?

I'm sure he's a nice guy, but Sufjan's music makes me want to puncture my own eardrums.

I can actually answer the second half of this now: why people like Jens Lekman = the same reason people like Charlieris Brown

-- nabisco, Tuesday, 20 November 2007 21:01 (1 hour ago) Bookmark Link

ummmmm sufjan's stuff doesn't sound awful to me. it's just kinda fucking boring. some of his textures are beautiful, but the flow can be really fucking boring.

jens rocks. sufjan is crap

i have sufjan's illinois album but i'm only keeping it because it's the superman cover and i'm hoping it'll be worth something one of these days. i like jens lekman.

I like Sufjan because he offers nice filler in between Magnetic Fields releases. I like Jens because he’s awesome.

songs like "casimir pulaski day" and "seven swans" are extremely great, and totally justify the filler songs, and filler-in-songs that make sufjan grate.

totally agree about the Dylan cover though.

Refrain: girlfriend likes both. Can see the appeal. Cute, solid tunes, clever lyrics, odor of sensitive candor. Would love to say I hate, but no. Illinois is occasionally great. Gacy song and the one about the wasp are moving & memorable. Jens is better - lots of soft soap craps, but some great songs snuck in with. Black Cab, Rocky Dennis, etc.

The Jens I've heard has been miles ahead of the Sufjan I've heard

jens' album is album of the year. once you get past the similarities in sound, their songs— and personalities— are pretty different.

a lot of jens' songs are about dumb, little things that happen in everyday life: slicing your finger, not having fun at a party etc. i guess others are quirky stories (i.e. pretending to be the bf of your lesbian friend). they're more about magnifying minor events whereas nearly every sufjan song seems like life or death or some huge revalation to him (which isn't nec a bad thing).

btw sufjan is HOTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT
who knew?

I thought everybody knew.

I will defend Sufjan: he is a skilled and ambitious arranger. He has a talent for building a song by manipulating texture and rhythm. He has a good way with melody, and a knack for writing songs from unexpected/fresh angles. I think his minimalistic leanings and overuse of certain textures, as well as his limited vocal palette, sometimes turn people off. But come on, he's good. Check out Majesty Snowbird, one of his newer tunes. I think it's a sweet tune, and it shows him turning more towards Romanticism.

No.

i don't care for this type of indie but the only act i'm gonna actively hate on is the decemberists. ugh.

obv, i think the problem is less that sufjan is terrible, and more that he's lauded as being AMAZING in circles

no? i mean, we always wanna hate the middle-of-the-road stuff that is totally heralded

http://dcist.com/attachments/dcist_tom/20070123_sufjan.jpg

i also just find his self-conscious quirkiness annoying.

although maybe it isn't self-conscious and he's really just that way, i don't know. but something about him just nags me OK???

I don't think Sufjan can be described as "middle of the road." He's maybe been a little too consistent about some things (as I alluded to above), and perhaps he's often held up as a representative example of a particular trend, but that doesn't make him middle of the road. He's doing his own thing, and I think you'll agree that he's rather ambitious about it even if you think the execution falls flat, which I don't.

And "twee" and "quirky" just don't seem to be doing so well these days. Perhaps it's a sign of the times.

yeah i guess he's better than average BUT i do find his ambition to be middle-of-the-road.

meaning, if you want to do that neat stuff with textures and your rhythms, you might as well go all the way and make it REALLY new sounding. not just horns-and-pulsating-voices-beneath-an-unexciting-melody-new.

Well, I just think there's a difference between saying you aren't impressed by his music (which is what it sounds like you're saying) and saying he's middle of the road (implying his sound is bland and indistinguishable from the crowd). I think a Sufjan tune, for better or worse, tends to be pretty easy to identify.

And I don't know whether it's fair to paint him as trying to be "new-sounding" and failing. I think his ambition lies in his song structures, the makeup of his ensembles, his subject matter, and his borrowings from classical music (mostly minimalism in particular) in a pop/folk context.

I don't see anything particularly quirky or ambitious about Sufjan outside of irritating publicity stunts (album for every state, christmas box set). Just sounds like watered down sub-AOR soft rock for the indie set to me.

xposts

OK, i'm not impressed by his music very much. AND what i've heard sounds kind of middle of the road -- to me. that's just an opinion.

also i'm not really trying to be fair when i say his music doesn't sound new to me. doesn't matter if he's trying to be new or not. i would just rather it sound more fresh than a dash of brass and a pinch of Steve Reich.

i'm going to lunch now

Well alright then.

All these objections boil down to "I don't like it." Nothing wrong with that. But objecting that Sufjan is not new - is middle of the road - passively insists that an unnamed other aesthetic is superior to whatever motivates him. I guess that's fine, too, but I'm bothered by the lack of insight or justification that might support this line of criticism. So what if Sufjan's not new, if he's MOR? What's wrong with those things? What other things are better - why and how?

Sufjan's style is distinctive and influential within his niche. At least some of his songs are memorable. His lyrics are intelligent, highly personal, even literary. A lot of people like him and his material, and it's more than that: he seems to mean something to people. Given all that, it seems ridiculous to pretend that his popularity is inconprehensible. Whether or not you like him, it's easy to see why he's revered.

As I once said, I wish more cubicle-indie acts were influenced by Vince Guaraldi and Steve Reich.

I wish more cubicle-indie acts were everything was influenced by Vince Guaraldi and Steve Reich.

The other day I somehow winded up watching a Youtube video of Sufjan playing his cover of the National Anthem, and I went from being disinterested in him to making a mental note to call him Surfjan from now on.

Ugh
ban all surfjan fanz

The internet has basically made it so a guy can't just write some normal songs without one group of people claiming that he's the best thing ever and another group of people claiming that he's destroying music.

More Jens talk, less Sufjan talk.

Responding to question upthread: I meant Charlie Brown the character more than Peanuts the comic strip

Harder to talk about Jens, 'cuz it's harder to hate. Less schticky, though the doe-eyed, "won't somebody love me?" act does irritate. The horrid shamelessness of it, even if there is some trace ironic element (not sure) that's supposed to undercut the entreaty.

I like "The Opposite of Hallelujah" more than any Sufjan number; it's cute, not cloying. But his voice can go flat just when you want it to soar.

sometimes i think sufjan's actual music is way less schticky than jens'. like "casimir pulaski day"/"john wayne gacy"/"chicago" are really only schticky in the context of illinois. or rather, sufjan has a new "schtick" every album, whereas jens' schtick is kind of his life (or at least that's what he would like us to believe).

the doe-eyed, "won't somebody love me?" act does irritate

This might seem to be the easy capsule description, but I think it reveals itself pretty quickly as not his game at all: he spends a surprising amount of time singing about how nobody's really quite amazing enough for him, actually! He's leaving you because he doesn't love you, he would never kiss anyone who doesn't burn him like the sun, etc. I actually really like the way this turns out: he comes off like the scary guy who's too romantic to actually engage in any real romance, if that makes sense. "I'm so full of love that no one can manage to deserve it."

I went from being disinterested in him to making a mental note to call him Surfjan from now on.

"Surfjam" is the proper nomenclature.

I need to listen to more Jens.

he sufjanizes every piece of music he touches. besides the dylan cover he recently did joni mitchell's free man in paris and he sucked all the joni out of it for his baroquish, samey sound.

he sufjanizes every piece of music he touches.

But see, that doesn't make a lot of sense as a criticism unless you smuggle in the premise "and Sufjan sucks." Unless that was supposed to be a compliment.

Yeah, see, I like Sufjan, and that Joni cover was abysmal.

"I'm so full of love that no one can manage to deserve it."

OTM. But I still see in that an implied message to the adoring fan: "maybe you could be the one?" At the very least, he's always telling us that he's romantically unfulfilled, for whatever reason. Couple that with the potential-boyfriend gentleness, the wistful wit, the boyish good looks... The whole thing starts to creep into indie-Fabio territory. Is Jens the indie Fabio?

Yeah, see, I like Sufjan, and that Joni cover was abysmal.

I haven't heard it, but I didn't like his cover of What Goes On. I'm just pointing out that "He makes all his covers sound like his own music!" is kind of a bizarre criticism.

All these objections boil down to "I don't like it." Nothing wrong with that. But objecting that Sufjan is not new - is middle of the road - passively insists that an unnamed other aesthetic is superior to whatever motivates him. I guess that's fine, too, but I'm bothered by the lack of insight or justification that might support this line of criticism. So what if Sufjan's not new, if he's MOR? What's wrong with those things? What other things are better - why and how?

Sufjan's style is distinctive and influential within his niche. At least some of his songs are memorable. His lyrics are intelligent, highly personal, even literary. A lot of people like him and his material, and it's more than that: he seems to mean something to people. Given all that, it seems ridiculous to pretend that his popularity is inconprehensible. Whether or not you like him, it's easy to see why he's revered.

-- Bob Standard, Wednesday, 21 November 2007 20:30 (3 hours ago) Link

a lot of objections boil down to "i don't like it"! to be honest, i don't really care enough to think about it more than i already have. and i'm not saying i don't understand why he's popular -- i didn't say that at all! i'm just saying i don't really like him. i can have that opinion and not write an essay on it.

when i say he doesn't sound new to me, i don't have something else specific in mind. i just feel like i've heard his textures before and i think he could extend them to create something bigger. and i guess there's nothing really wrong with music that doesn't sound new or fresh -- that's just how i like the music i listen to.

OK to be COMPLETELY honest, i feel a little weird cuz i think i resent him unfairly. yes it's true. also today in the office -- no yesterday -- i was defending a few songs of his that came on. yes.

but i still don't like him.

Ok, to clarify, I find sufjans music innocuous (in both the harmless and insipid sense). I don't care about his popularity or whther he deserves it. His grandiose gestures (as I mentioned above) do make me dislike the guy quite a bit, though.

lololol

http://assets3.pitchforkmedia.com/images/image/43551.sufjanheader.jpg

And the Dave Matthews Dresses Me award goes to…

http://images.jupiterimages.com/common/detail/63/10/23051063.jpg

WHAT DO PEOPLE LIKE ABOUT SUFJAN STEVENS

http://i127.photobucket.com/albums/p147/pamelak03608/sufjan1.jpg

http://i26.photobucket.com/albums/c129/chloe_1405/800px-Sufjan_Stevens_playing_banjo.jpg

http://i208.photobucket.com/albums/bb308/themenaceknownasdennis/Sufjan-Stevens-f03.jpg

http://radiodiatribe.com/wp-content/uploads/2005/12/SufjanSideBySide.jpeg

http://www.equalbias.com/sufjan_stevens.jpg

http://assets4.pitchforkmedia.com/images/image/21138.x-news-sufjanstevenstopic2.jpg

http://www.recoilmag.com/interviews/grfx/sufjan_stevens_0905.jpg

http://www.avclub.com/content/files/images/sufjan_xmas3_dennyrenshaw.article.jpg

Lekman - I have only heard one good song, 'the opposite of Hallelujah'. it's great! but I don't find him great otherwise, at all.

Stevens: I admire ambition, but I don't hear a lot of classics here.

People who read a lot of literary fiction often like Sufjan or Jens in my experience.

That sounds like you are dissing readers of literary fiction.

lemme guess these people are ALL totally into Danielson and The Decemberists too amirite

People who read a lot of literary fiction often like Sufjan or Jens in my experience.

― Treblekicker

Wait, what?

I agree with the pinefox, but the reason we like The Opposite of Hallelujah is its liberal borrowing of this

ha, otm. i was once torn whether or not to dance to that song: because it sounds enough like that to dance to, but is comparatively awful and doesn't have the great 'brrrrr-p!' bit.

People who read a lot of literary fiction often like Sufjan or Jens in my experience.

literary fiction will survive this association. see also: murakami/sigur ros fans.

People who read a lot of literary fiction often like Sufjan or Jens in my experience.

― Treblekicker

Wait, what?

Just that. Personal observation from friends/acquantances. No. Slight. Intended. Maybe down to the wordiness of their lyrics?

admittedly the Jens version is less ott, and has a little more syncopation and dancing Swedish girls

Jens Lekman is like too many painkillers or something.

What is meant here by 'literary fiction'? Presumably something like the last 300 years' worth of the history of the novel?

Gooblar will be so hurt!

Because he writes about novels. He likes the Boss, too.

Alas, youtube very often doesn't work properly for me, and today it is not playing sound. But I do know that song, up to a point.