Free Man in Paris
Stereogum has the news that our man Sufjan is covering the illustrious Joni Mitchell on an upcoming tribute album. His track is "Free Man in Paris."
I've been on the fence about Suf for a while. I think he's doing some daring and interesting things, but mixed in with all that is a lot of pseudo-virtuosic junk. It could be that he just needs an editor, someone to say, "No, man, we don't need an album full of outtakes from your latest overstuffed 'masterpiece.'" His (and I cannot believe that I am about to write this sentence about a musician who has been on the scene a mere three or four years) early stuff is really good. But I just cannot sit all the way through "Illinoise" (to say nothing of "Avalanche").
Anyway, I think that this track may have pushed me over into the "not a fan" camp. OK, he's trying to do something different with the song, but he's taken away from it everything that makes it a great song to begin with. He slows it down and evens out Joni's push/pull phrasing that gives the song its urgency and vitality. (Now might be a good time to compare the two versions at Hype Machine. I'll wait.) This is one of the rare songs that makes me dislike it more with each listen. Yeah, he's made it his own, in that it sounds exactly like every other damn song he's written in the last two years.
-- Emily Hulme, www.amNY.com
