SOUNDTRACK: SUFJAN STEVENS, BRYCE DESSNER, NICO MUHLY-“Mercury” (Field Recordings, June 8, 2017).
I love Sufjan’s Steven’s voice. And this song, from the Planetarium project is just beautiful. [Watch Sufjan Stevens, Nico Muhly And Bryce Dessner Play ‘Planetarium’ Track ‘Mercury’] It opens with just the simple repeating piano melody and Stevens’ singing. Eventually a guitar is added, playing complimentary melody.
Steven’s voice remains pure and powerful in this live recording. The viola from Nadia Sirota adds a lovely counterpoint to this song and leads it into the middle part which is minor keys and stings.
“Mercury” is the closing track off Planetarium, a song cycle about the planets by Stevens, Dessner, Muhly and James McAlister. The work was originally composed on commission for the Dutch concert hall Muziekgebouw Eindhoven, and first performed there in 2012. Five turns around the sun later, Planetarium will arrive in recorded form on June 9 via 4AD. “Mercury” is one of the most intimate songs on the record, a quality that’s emphasized by its spot just after the 15-minute, ambient, electronic epic, “Earth.” Where the record’s other songs foreground synthesizers and spastic electric drum samples reminiscent of 2010’s The Age of Adz, “Mercury” largely rests on Muhly’s gentle piano work and Stevens’ beautiful vocal. Where once, in the original live performances, the song swelled to a cinematic rush on the order of Illinois, it’s now spare and elegant. Its warm intimacy is all the more apparent in the group’s live performance, which features Dessner of The National lightly doubling on guitar Stevens’ wordless refrain at the song’s close. Like many of the pieces on the record, its lyrics are a constellation of the cosmic, the personal and the mythological. The song, named for the messenger god, is a perfect musical setting for the feeling of having something dear carried away from you. “All that I’ve known to be of life / and I am gentle,” Stevens sings. “
I love hearing his voice live, because it’s so perfect on record and while this is in no way imperfect, it lets us see a bit of humanity. Even if this recording isn’t in a field or even an unconventional space, it’s still quite lovely.
[READ: January 3, 2015] “Little Man”
I feel like it takes a lot if chutzpah to recreate a story that is familiar to everyone. This is the story of Rumpelstiltskin as told from the point of view of the little man himself.
But the twist on it is that Rumpelstiltskin isn’t a strange psycho bent on stealing children. Rather, he is a lonely man, with no hope of finding love or having a child of his own. Indeed, the first section is taken up with the man’s desire to have a child and his belief that having a child is not like ordering a pizza, which is how many couples seems to take it.
The story is written in second person (you), so it is meant to be even more intimate. (more…)