Well, it might be a little early to be declaring the Gig of the Year award, but I'm pretty confident the show I saw last night at the Form Theatre will be a strong contender. Yes, it was the wonderful Mr Stevens, taking time out of his forthcoming "Delaware" effort (no, not really) to tour Australia for the first time. And what a privilege it was to have him here. No, sadly I don't have any photos, but I'm sure you can find them with little difficulty - and it was quite a visual spectacle, with Sufjan and his brigade of mountain men and women dressed in something that appeared to be Park Ranger attire, Sufjan himself sporting some sort of lumberjack-chic winter hat (only Sufjan could carry that off). And what a band too - two trumpets, a sax, trombone and French horn, along with guitars, banjo (of course), piano, sometimes even a xylophone - all coming together to create that inimitable Sufjan sound that's somewhere between "Appalachian Spring" and Will Oldham doing gospel classics, but also not like anything you could really describe.
The highlight was, almost without question, the newish song "Majesty, Snowbird", which we all hope is from a forthcoming album. Please, Sufjan, please. Replete with glorious, multi-coloured bird wings, Sufjan and brigadiers proceeded to perform one magnificent, 10 minute piece of musical and visual art, a performance that was perhaps only just bettered by the encore: first, a sound-and-image suite about the Brooklyn roadway, complete with a hula-hoop dancer (and Sufjan having an impressive go at a bit of hoop-dancing himself), then, of course, "Chicago", because they couldn't have done a show without "Chicago". Maybe, just maybe, the encore topped "Majesty, Snowbird", but I'm still not sure the latter could be bettered.
There are a lot of videos of it on YouTube, none of which are all that good, but have a look anyway. It might give you some idea of just how wonderful it was. If you like Sufjan, and I'm not sure how anyone could NOT like the man. But I've been wrong before. And some people just don't have taste.
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