Sufjan Stevens-- Concerning the UFO Sighting Near Highland, Illinois

This post will be covering a song near and dear to my heart. Allow me for a moment to wipe a digital tear away from the screen as I reminisce on the first time I heard this album, and how it changed my life forever. Sufjan Steven’s groundbreaking album Come on, Feel the Illinoise (or Illinois for short), is considered by many to be one of the best albums of the decade. And this first track was what set into motion a series of unalterable events that has brought me to writing this blog post, right now.

Phew!

Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s get on to the song itself.

Note: this recording is uploaded in the spirit of educational advancement, as found in Title 17, Section 107, United States Code. If found in violation of creative rights, please email me at jharms.music@gmail.com

Music can be bought on the Asthmatic Kitty site, here.

Text

When the revenant came down

We couldn’t imagine what it was

In the spirit of three stars

The alien thing that took its form

Then to Lebanon, Oh God

The flashing at night, the sirens grow and grow

History involved itself

Mysterious shape that took its form

Oh what it was

Incarnation

Three stars

Delivering signs and dusting from their eyes

There are several layers to this poem, so let’s start with the title. On the surface, it has something to do with UFO sightings. In a live concert, Stevens talks about finding quite a few police reports about UFO sightings around Highland when he was doing research for Illinois. He also tells a fun story about aliens visiting his father.

However, there’s a lot going on in this text beneath the surface. For those of you who need to look it up (like myself), a revenant is defined by Merriam-Webster to be “one that returns after death or a long absence.” This, along with a lot of cryptic imagery, is dropping huge clues to the true meaning of the text.

Stevens is making an allusion to the second coming of Christ. Imagery of the trinity, cries to God, miraculous signs and a reference to the Middle East all point to the Incarnation of Christ. Now whether he literally thinks that Jesus will come to Earth in a flying saucer is up for debate, but it certainly opens the imagination about what the second coming might look like.

Harmonic Analysis

Special thanks to atownes at tabnabber.com for help with the voicings.

I started by making a transcription of the recording, which was rathe awkward to do in western notation. In the end, I used a combination of accented bass notes and textual accents to determine the bar lengths. I originally put out the full transcription on this, but have since decided it's probably not fair to Sufjan to give it out freely without his permission. Send me an email at jharms.music [at] gmail.com if you want it, and I'll talk to Sufjan about it.

Trying to analyze this piece using Roman Numeral Analysis presents some interesting issues. The first is trying to find what key we’re in. One possibility is G major. Pros for Team-G include: the beginning chord is a G, the prevailing accidentals are F#, and the melodic line is centered on G. This is why I’ve notated the pitch collection to have one sharp. However, I’m convinced that the first chord is more of a pickup into A minor, where the phrase begins. And why does the piece end on the fifth scale degree of A major? You can probably argue the piece is in A Dorian, with some modal mixture to top off the end, but the argument is weaker. Neither option really presents us with strong cadences, either.

Because of this confusion of tonal center, and because of the way the accompaniment “dwells” on each chord separately, I think Neo-Riemannian Analysis works best in this situation. (If you think I’m speaking flippity-foop-fambandingo, check out my analysis of DM Stith’s “Isaac’s Song.”)

Unfortunately, NRT doesn’t fit as neatly into this example as it did into DM Stith’s. At measure 7, we get a rather complicated Gmaj7 chord. NRT doesn’t specify how to handle seventh chords, as this brings in a new layer of complication that muddies the structure of the theory. Therefore, I’m going to treat it as a quick G major hit followed by B minor.

The only other interesting thing to mention is the closing. After finishing seven complete cycles, Stevens does a little flourish and fades out on an A major. Is this a Piccardy third? Perhaps in some twisted sense, but my ear doesn’t hear a Piccardy third without a V - I cadence to go with it. However, I do still hear it as modal mixture—which argues away from my analysis using NRT. What do you hear?

Rhythmic Complexity

Possibly one of the most interesting things Stevens does with this piece is how he plays with the listener’s expectation. Your ear is constantly battling between two styles—a strong backbeat, being strengthened at the beginning of each chord, and a feeling of unmetered, lengthy chord enforcements. The odd lengths of bars throws off the ear, creating a feeling of uneasiness. And to make sure your ear doesn’t catch on to the pattern, he interjects 2/4 bars at the ends of sections, to keep the backbeat rocking in your ear, clashing with odd metrics.

What’s even more interesting is how the piece doesn’t leave it at that—the length of bars change throughout the piece. Below is a chart of how long (in eighth notes) each chord is sustained through the piece.

One question that might come to mind is, did Stevens purposefully plan out how long each chord was to be held? Or did he just wing it on the fly? There are arguments on both sides. Most live performances of this song reveal him to be a passionate, but technically lacking pianist; he forgoes the complex rhythms in live settings to play the chords out of time. But looking at this chart, you can’t help but notice a few patterns, especially how the Gmaj7 chord always uses 17 eighth notes (excepting section F, which is the only time in the piece the pianist plays a dotted quarter rhythm).

Closing Thoughts

Sufjan did a lot in this little 2’15” piece to challenge the idea of a pop song. As an introduction to what is thus far one of his most significant works, he 1) uses odd instrumentation for rock, pop, and folk idioms, 2) sings about aliens, zombies and Jesus at the same time, 3) Defies normal progressions and avoids anything that sounds like a cadence through the entire piece, and 4) creates a confusing sense of rhythm that inspires both pop sensibilities and minimalistic drones, and leaves us guessing at his original intent.

And, of course, all of this is past simply listening to the beautiful way he presents all of these things. If you haven’t ever heard of Sufjan Stevens, I highly recommend you buy the album! Again, you can find it here.

Sufjan Stevens is one of the heavyweights out there right now, forging a middle ground between many different styles. As Bryce Dessner is fond of saying, the music “takes risks, and doesn’t fit neatly into any category.”