Shannon

OMG, I just read this review of a Sufjan Stevens show from a couple nights ago and was like HOLY CRAP I NEED TO SEE HIM LIVE so I go look at his tour dates and it turns out he was in Michigan FUCKING TONIGHT. WTFFFFFF?!?!?!? I hope he tours more in support of this album because it sounds like it is fucking phenomenal live. And it's basically all I've been listening to with any consistency lately. That and various other Sufjan songs, because I'm still trying to get into his back catalog and really loving some songs, but I'm just not feeling any other album as much as I do the stuff he's released this year. Oh, also, I've been listening a lot to Hospice by the Antlers these past few days. I listened to this last year around when it was released and thought it was insanely boring and couldn't even remember five minutes later what any of it sounded like. But since it seems so universally loved, I decided to check it out again and I had it sitting on my mp3 player and "Sylvia" came up on shuffle and I loved it so I listened to the whole album and now I'm kind of obsessed. Strangely enough, it's not nearly as quiet and reserved and simplistic overall as I remembered it being. And it's ridiculously emotional and devastating. I didn't know that it was all supposed to tell a story before but now that I do, guh, it's so much more depressing. The whole album kind of makes me hurt inside in a really good way. Back to Sufjan, "John Wayne Gacy, Jr." is a song that does that to me as well. It like... actually makes my stomach feel strange and queasy because it's just so upsetting and chilling but it's so damn good that I can't help but subject myself to the horror over and over again. Those last few lines kill me: "And in my best behavior/I am really just like him/Look beneath the floorboards/For the secrets I have hid." HOLY SHIT SO CREEPY. And his falsetto on the "oh my god" and "on the mouth" bits, asdkjfdgklweutgjskldgja, IT KILLS ME, KILLS ME! SUFJAN, HOW ARE YOU SUCH A FUCKING MUSICAL GENIUS?!? Seriously, he is so damn brilliant that he actually makes me love and sing along shamelessly to a song that tells me to "get real, get right with the Lord." I don't agree with it but, fuck it, it's just so ridiculously catchy. Damn, I even love "Djohariah" to death now and the first time I heard it I'm like, "No way am I sitting through about twelve minutes of guitar noodling every time I listen to this EP." But now that looooooong build-up to the part of the song with actual real lyrics seems so epic and cathartic to me that it's like as close to a fucking religious experience that a non-religious person can get. IT'S AMAZING, OKAY?!?

Alrighty then... I am clearly past the point of no return with this obsession because I am using excessive curse words to get across my point and I can't even say one bad thing about any of his music anymore. But I don't even care. IT IS SO GLORIOUS. SUFJAN IS LIKE A MUSICAL GOD AND I DON'T EVEN CARE IF HE WOULD TAKE OFFENSE TO 
THAT DESCRIPTION, OKAY.

Bye now.