well anyways...this album is like the best thing in the last 10 years.

aka 4 months.

I saw him last night (with the Illinoisemakers) at a very small club in Santa Cruz, the Attic. I was five feet from the stage and could see his pores. The crowd was unusually young and wholesome (for Santa Curz... or maybe anywhere). There were young men with T-Shirts faded, noting Christian wilderness experience camps. Lots of Christians I suspect.

I was very interested in hearing him live. You can see into what a song means to an artist, and get a better sense of the quality of the songwriting I think when you see an artist without the studio tricks to filter. Additionally, what is so striking about Michigan and lllinois is the arrangements, the instrumentations, the layered textures of the songs. What would they be stripped down. I have thought Stevens may actually be a very great artist, and the songs, and their lyric content, seemed like this guy could be a contender. I needed to see how he meant the songs, what irony? what sex? what personal risk? what need produced them? Was he really that good?

Yes. He was deeply effective performing most of them. He is writing from a strange, unique personal place. His "conceptual construct" (which make reviewers still want to say "perfomance artist"), is a vehicle for some pretty strong emotions and ideas. He also totally screwed some songs up, flubbed the lyrics, the band knew the lyrics better than he did often, was an uneven musician... but he is earnestly creating some fine music. And for the purposes of this thread... I was completely taken with the range of his songs, the variety of structures, the complexity.

I can't believe he can sustain the 50 states conceptual intent. It is already a gimmick that is not that amusing. But the songs spawned from it are spectacularly designed, and performed from deep within a pretty unique spirit.

In your name Lord, amen. And take... and take...and take....

That right there says it's not a "gimmick," then, because gimmicks tend to be the whole point of the project, where the state is just a basic source of inspiration for Stevens. Can he keep it up? I can't imagine how . . . but then I'm not a fantastically talented songwriter, either. I'm amazed he got two albums of this series out, actually, and that the second didn't fall on its face. The opposite, really - it's quickly becoming one of my favorite albums of the year.