Pitchfork Forkcast: New Music: Sufjan Stevens: "A Free Man in Paris" (Joni Mitchell cover) [Stream]

New Music: Sufjan Stevens: "A Free Man in Paris" (Joni Mitchell cover) [Stream]

Who knew Sufjan Stevens was capable of this kind of violence? It's not his cover choice that seems brutal, but how he chooses to reinterpret this simple Joni Mitchell song: Stevens strips the original of everything except its lyrics-- even the original melody. Then he replaces the simple acoustic guitar, deploying all the tricks in his playbook at once: rising horns, glockenspiel for glockenspiel's sake, and sighing strings. Thankfully, he balances the heavy orchestration on the chorus by keeping the verses quiet. After all, it was Mitchell's smoky voice that drove the original, and you'll want to hear Stevens' somewhere in here.

It's funny to listen to Stevens sing about "stoking the star maker machinery." Funny to hear Joni Mitchell do the same, but then, she wrote the song about her friend David Geffen. Stevens may be an executive at Asthmatic Kitty Corp., but he's not making and breaking careers. Maybe Stevens only kept the lyrics because that's what he was drawn to the most, Geffen's desire for solitude and escape appealing to Stevens' press-shy personality.

[from A Tribute to Joni Mitchell; due 04/24/07 on Nonesuch Records]

Thu: 05-15-08: 04:15 PM CDT
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