Sufjan + iTunes + Woodpecker = More Great Music

In their review of Sufjan Stevens’ Illinois, Delusions Of Adequacy couldn’t help but wonder if we were getting too much of a good thing with his music. And who can blame them? Sufjan takes “prolific” to a whole new level.

For example, if you fire up your copy of iTunes, go to the iTunes Music Store, and look at the listing for Illinois, you’ll find not one, but two bonus tracks.

First, there’s a remix of “Chicago” by Jongalloway that takes the original track’s elaborate arrangements and runs them through the same filters and noisemakers that gave rise to Enjoy Your Rabbit’s kaleidoscopic sound. Then there’s “The Avalanche,” which is anything but, what with its gentle interplay of banjo, piano, and the wavering vocals of Sufjan and his female cohorts.

And now, NPR has an exclusive track from Sufjan celebrating the Arkansas town of Brinkley and the recent rediscovery of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker. Producers Dan Collison and Elizabeth Meister were intrigued by Sufjan’s songwriting and storytelling. So they interviewed residents of Brinkley, passed the interviews on to Sufjan, and asked him to write a song inspired by the material.

The end result is “The Lord God Bird,” quite possibly the loveliest song ever written for a woodpecker once thought extinct. (For some reason, listening to the song makes me want to dig out Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek and read a chapter or two. Go figure.)

Perhaps a day will come when Sufjan stumbles and releases some subpar music, but that day is not today.

Click here for more info on the song and here for more info on the Ivory-billed Woodpecker.