Sufjan Stevens: "Dear Mr. Supercomputer"

There are a treasure trove of critical perspectives both wanky/overstated and readable/insightful with which to approach Sufjan Steven’s music: The overarching tribute-to-each-state project; Christianity; multi-instrumentalism; the warm embrace of the Danielson Famile; making an abnormally large band work financially in an indie framework; stage dress as fan-killer. And any one of these concepts can be just as much a reason to write off one of Steven’s project as pretentious as it is to drink the Kool-Aid and get outfitted for swan feathers.

Which is why it’s so great to love a Sufjan song simply because it uses a 7/4 time signature in a way that isn’t showy or supercilious, in a way that will subtly supplant drum patterns and melody in your head the same way Pink Floyd’s “Money” did. “Dear Mr. Supercomputer” doesn’t require that you’re provided background to enjoy it, or even be familiar with Illinois(which this, somehow, did not make it onto). Instead, the opening chuck of a distorted bass re-contextualizes those namesake clarinets, flutes, horns and now-familiar vibraphones into something still familiar but distinctly fun. The torrent (for Sufjan) intro drops off into fret-pressing accents and another of the band’s gorgeous, multi-layered vocal backdrops, and from there the song builds back into its central melody, again anchored by a now-undistorted bass.

There is nothing heady or tragic at work here, as the title’s absurdity surely attests. It’s ironic, though, that it took a divergence from Dear Mr. Superprolific’s grand narratives to get a song as directly and lovably indie as this.

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