Having grown up a Pastor’s child, Seven Swans is immediately familiar to me. The song titles alone are enough to remind me of singing ‘All the Trees of the Field Will Clap Their Hands’ or ‘Father Abraham’ in Sunday school, with hand claps and piano accompaniment (provided by my mother) galore. Sufjan Stevens brings to his music the sparse haunting of small-town upbringing and also the powerful immensity of trying to understand God in childhood.
Seven Swans is an album of quietness either interrupted or augmented. More straight-ahead tunes featuring mostly an acoustic guitar and a vocal track like ‘Abraham’ and ‘Size Too Small’ are often finished with a keyboard or organ or some other strange sound which give release to the great tension Stevens strives for in his song craft and arrangements and provides also an airing out of the quiet. Swans, sparseness or no, really has more in common with a country or rock band than a folk one; more Bridge Over Troubled Water than Wednesday Morning 3AM Stevens (along with producer Daniel Smith, of the Danielson Famile) works to build tension and release it not only in each song but within the framework of the album itself. ‘The Devil’s Territory,’ with all its swirling organs, gives greater weight to the opening two songs; ‘Sister,’ sitting in the middle of the album, not only builds to a euphoric immensity of its own (with the appearance of electric guitars and sustained organ chords) but serves to let out the sadness and longing created in the first half of the record.
Seven Swans oftentimes feels huge, as though you are being overtaken by it, which goes along well with Stevens’ ability to craft haunting melody lines with transcendence and transgression oriented lyrics. He provides the eerie backdrop of intimate vocals seemingly sung straight to God and then explodes that intimacy with largeness and the musical power of multiple-vocals, drums with crashing cymbals, organs and pianos. Swans, musically, seeks to surround the listener by that which is greater, that which it is your desire (known or unknown) to be enveloped by. The final two songs, ‘Seven Swans’ and ‘The Transfiguration’ exercise this well, building, in the first, to a terrified calling of the lines, ‘He will take / If you run he will chase you / ‘Cause he is the Lord,’ a recurring theme in the album suggesting hope in the idea of an interested God. ( ‘He Woke Me Up Again,’ ‘All the Trees of the Field,’ and ‘We Won’t Need Legs To Stand’ need only the titles to suggest this.)
Listening to ‘He Woke Me Up Again,’ near album’s close, has me back in Sunday school again, singing ‘Halle Halle Hallelujah.’ Stevens’ greatest power is his love and fascination with childhood perceptions. The greatest of songs on this record – ‘Seven Swans’ and ‘The Transfiguration,’ namely – both imagine large outdoor scenes of fire and the 2nd Coming. It is these opposites – desperation and hope, fear and courage, the intimacy of one and the power of many – that make Seven Swans an altering and memorable experience, and Stevens a songwriter to be appreciated. |