Musical Wednesdays: Sufjan and the National!

After reading this interview, I was a little worried about Sufjan Stevens' future.  It seems like he was going through a bit of a crisis, in which expectations are so high after you've released a masterpiece that it scares you out of doing anything else (see also: Harper Lee and J.D. Salinger).  I thought maybe he'd vanish, Jeff Mangum style, and become one of those legends who plays at someone else's show every six years or so.  Maybe his BQE project was the equivalent of Mangum's field recordings of a Romanian circus.

For me, Illinois was one of those records that I wanted to live inside of, with songs that haunted me long after I'd heard them.  The song Chicago was so definitive, so descriptive of my understanding of faith in America, that it was almost a hymn.  It stirs me the way Leaves of Grass does, or the way the Band's music does.  And music that has that effect on a lot of people can terrify its creator--so I can understand why Sufjan has acted like something of a hermit for the past few years.  But that interview, like I said, made me worry that he was going to go away.

But there's hope yet!  Sufjan is recording a new album, and he's working with the National!  There's not much more to say yet, but the fact that it's being recorded makes me happy.  And maybe since the National started out in Ohio, that state will be Sufjan's next subject.  Even if it's not an album inspired by one of the states, I am excited to see what Stevens will produce next.