Live Review: Sufjan Stevens

When just minutes into opener “Seven Swans” a pair of spectacular white wings materialise between Sufjan Steven’s shoulder blades, it becomes clear that this is not your average live show. But then again, with a back catalogue that veers between pretty acoustica, Christmas songs and a symphonic response to a New York expressway, Stevens is not your average artist. The show, promoting Stevens’ latest release, fractured but fascinating electro pop record The Age of Adz, reflects this restless creativity, flitting from contagious dance to solo folk with unstoppable energy.

Even before the feathers appear, “Seven Swans” is an achingly beautiful beginning, accompanied by a backdrop of shimmering stars arranging themselves into constellations to an overwhelming crescendo. Yet just as we adjust to this magnificent sight, Stevens sheds the wings and segues into new track “Too Much”, a “love song to the apocalypse” which frequently collapses into fits of sonic squelching, and the band are transformed into UV coated 90s ravers in a matter of seconds.

It is a wildly uneven gig, but that’s part of its charm. Stevens switches from electronic paranoia to calmer older numbers with ease. His fragile voice is sometimes little more than a husky whisper but it remains brilliantly expressive, rising to a cracked cry on the powerful “I Want to Be Well”. It is this intensity, combined with virtuosic musicianship that holds the audience’s attention even in the spaciest situations.

Stevens frequently rambles between songs, at one stage giving a ten minute lecture complete with slideshow, about Schizophrenic artist Royal Robertson, whose paranoid belief in the approaching alien apocalypse inspired the new album. Although it seems sacrilege to stop playing when the music is this beautiful, this at least explains the bizarre staging, complete with mesmerising video backdrops, costumes that frequently resemble Blue Peter make-its gone horribly wrong, and backing singers that look and move like extras from a Dreaming era Kate Bush video. When the slight but beautiful “Futile Devices” is interrupted by a bearded man in a silver robe playing a Casio it  seems (almost) natural. “It was gruelling audition” Stevens deadpans, “we had to do blood tests to check he was a star person”.

In a set dominated by the aesthetics of the new album, it is unsurprising that audience members drawn in by the pretty orchestral pop of Illinois seem a little disorientated. Nevertheless they are won over by sheer spectacle  and “Vesuvius” even gets the audience dancing, although not, as Stevens wryly suggests, like Janet Jackson. The evening’s most testing but also most striking moments come with twenty five minute closer “Impossible Soul”. It is an exhausting but heart stopping performance, absurd and utterly compelling as it builds from understated shimmering opening, to mesmeric dance cult, back to a lone whisper. Complete with descending spaceship, dance routines and even Stevens himself abusing a vocoder whilst dressed in a blond wig and tin foil wings like a drag alien from a 1950s B-movie.

It may not be the smoothest of performances but as Stevens himself points out, he’s no Bieber. By encoring with a balloon cascade and three tracks from Illinois, including the irrepressible “Chicago”, Stevens ensures that even fair weather fans leave uplifted. Part Star-trek convention on acid, part School band gone berserk, Steven’s show is a brilliant, sometimes baffling, but always dazzling showcase for one of contemporary pops most unpredictable performers. Unmissable.

Sufjan Stevens, Manchester Apollo, 19/05/11