Tuesday 11 December 2007

My New Sufjan Stevens CD

2007 has been the first year in a while without a new Sufjan Stevens CD release, and it's been tough! After Avalanche and Songs for Christmas in 2006 I guess we've been spoilt.

However, trawling the internet for anything Sufjan, soon reveals a varied bag of out-takes, B-sides, orphans, one-offs, tribute songs etc. I reckon I've collected most of them by now, but I'd be deluding myself and others if I claimed they were all fantastic. Oh no, they're not all great by any means, but some of these neglected tracks are really good - too good to remain internet curiosities. They deserve better... they deserve to be enjoyed on your CD player.

So I decided to take matters into my own hands by making my own 'new' Sufjan CD. After discarding some grungy and glitchy tracks like The First Full Moon and All Delighted People, as well as some live oddities like Sufjan's own Star Spangled Banner, I'm left with a collection of acoustic bluesy numbers of surprisingly high production quality.

I'm not sure about the origins of all the tracks although most have the hallmarks of the Michigan or Seven Swans sessions. If you love The Avalanche then you won't need any further convincing about the worth of Sufjan's out-takes. If you prefer Seven Swans to the state CDs this will be right up your street.

So here's the running order of the 39 minute CD, which I've called:

Wolverine, and other cruelly neglected songs by Sufjan Stevens.

1. I Went Dancing With My Sister
2. Wolverine
3. Damascus
4. I Can't Even Lift My Head
5. Waste Of What Your Kids Won't Have
6. Opie's Funeral Song
7. Far Physician's Son
8. Borderline
9. The Lord God Bird
10. Variations On Commemorative Transfiguration And Communion At Magruder Park
11. Woman At The Well

Disclaimer: This is not an official Sufjan Stevens CD. It's not even an unofficial one. It's just my idea of a CD that could exist.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...
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Anonymous said...

Hi there,

This is a question for the webmaster/admin here at baroquepop.blogspot.com.

May I use some of the information from your blog post right above if I give a backlink back to this website?

Thanks,
Harry

port956 said...

Sure, Harry, that how the internet works!