Chapter 1

Sufjan Pronounced “Soof-Yahn”

It's a heavy handle – originating from Armenia and meaning “comes with a sword” – that has always been a talking point.

“I've spent my life time explaining my name, spelling it and pronouncing it,” Stevens told triple j's Linda Marigliano. “I never learn other people's names because I spend too much time explaining my own. In a lot of situations people just called me ‘Steve'.”

On the song ‘Eugene' off his latest album, Carrie & Lowell, Stevens sings: “The man who taught me to swim, he couldn't quite say my first name, he called me ‘Subaru'.”

Chapter 2

The United States of Sufjan Stevens

Right from the outset of his career, Sufjan Stevens has revelled in writing and recording concept albums. Albums celebrating such wide-ranging topics as American states, expressways, outsider art, insomnia and the joys of Christmas.

“The concept is something that you build up to,” Stevens told triple j's Zan Rowe. “It's usually very small, strumming a guitar or playing a note on the piano. A lot of what I create is the result of disillusionment or frustration or troubleshooting. It just creates so much material. I wish I could work smaller.”

Stevens' second record, 2001's Enjoy Your Rabbit, was an unexpected left turn from his folky debut. It was an electronic instrumental song cycle based on the symbols of the Chinese horoscope (Stevens was born in 1975, the Year of the Rabbit).

“That record has always been somewhat mysterious to me,” he admitted. “It's an anomaly, it's all electronic, it's instrumental. It was my first big conceptual project.”

The albums that made him famous – 2003's Michigan aka Greetings from Michigan: The Great Lake State and 2005's Illinois aka Sufjan Stevens Invites You To: Come on Feel the Illinoise – explored Sufjan's take on Middle America.

These state of the union addresses mixed personal recollections with history, geography and social science. Michigan, a love letter to his home state, was full of tales of hard-bitten struggle, tall pines, snow and feelings of nostalgia.

“I don't think what I do is very contemporary or topical at all,” Stevens told Zan Rowe. “I think my music is reflecting an imaginary, fantastical world that transcends ordinary life. I don't think it's about escape, I think it's to reflect, to render or interpret. To discover greater truths about ordinary life. There's more than just escapism.”

On Illinois, songs were populated by the likes of US presidents Andrew Jackson and Abe Lincoln, poet laureate Carl Sandburg, architect Frank Lloyd Wright and Sauk leader Black Hawk, who inspired an instrumental titled: ‘The Black Hawk War, or, How to Demolish an Entire Civilization and Still Feel Good About Yourself in the Morning, or, We Apologize for the Inconvenience but You're Going to Have to Leave Now, or, 'I Have Fought the Big Knives and Will Continue to Fight Them Until They Are Off Our Lands!''

Notorious Chicago serial rapist/killer John Wayne Gacy Jr, the man responsible for the murder of at least 33 boys and young men, also got a tribute. Perversely, Gacy gets the most aching melody on the record.

“And in my best behaviour I am really just like him,” Stevens sings. “Look beneath the floorboards / For the secrets I have hid.”

The original grand plan – known as the 50 State Project – was to conceive a record for every American state. And, despite Stevens later admitting the idea was nothing more than a promo gimmick - “it was all proposition and hyperbole” – there's still hope. Two down, 48 to go.

Chapter 3

Expressway to Your Skull

“In some ways, I worry that too much of society is about conditioning us and shaping us, almost entrapping us to be these obedient, efficient members of society. Music doesn't really obey those standards and principles. Music is resistant to the socialisation of man.”

To call the music of Sufjan Stevens outsider art is a stretch, but he was inspired by a real outsider for the 2010 album, The Age of Adz.

Royal Robertson, who died in 1997, was a painter from Louisiana, a paranoid schizophrenic obsessed with divinations, aliens, spaceships, futuristic cities, numerology and the Bible.

“He was a self-proclaimed prophet, a minister, a soothsayer and psychic,” Stevens explained to triple j's Linda Marigliano. “He believes he was making art to send a message to the people about the Apocalypse, the end of the world, Utopia and the Celestial City. He was just a real visionary artist. It appealed to me because I've always been obsessed with the heavens and outer space.”

The Age of Adz, featuring Robertson's artwork throughout, saw Stevens at his most discordant and challenging. “For me, it was all about dismemberment, deconstruction, cacophony and opening myself up to the hostility of improvisation,” he said. “I just tried everything I could do – I was running things through delays, throwing books on the floor and recording it, running my voice through pedals and processors. But, at the end of the day, they really are just pop songs. They're very danceable, there's melodies, it has all the trappings of pop music but it's built on improvisation and experimentation.”

The most unexpected concept that's driven a Sufjan Stevens project is the soundtrack to The BQE – a multi-media album, film, and live-show homage to the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. It detailed the hate/love relationship Stevens enjoys with the notorious thoroughfare.

“It's like a wound, a living scar that runs through our city,” he admitted to Zan Rowe. “It's badly constructed, an obstacle and an impediment for pedestrians that's constantly falling apart.

"At the same time it's also this beautiful monument to post-Industrialism and Modernism, a rollercoaster of art and a platform to viewing these gorgeous panoramic sights of Brooklyn, Queens and Manhattan. There's now an intimacy that I have for the expressway.

"Before, I'd just gripe if I was stuck in traffic, but having spent so much time stuck in traffic, I think I've transcended it, I've reached enlightenment. Now I see it like this gorgeous, choreographed dance. Traffic is like choreography.”

Vimeo

Chapter 4

The Gospel According to Sufjan Stevens

Sufjan Stevens performing at Sydney's State Theatre, January 2008. Photo: Matt Booy / triple j

There's an idea that the writings of Sufjan Stevens can be boiled down to one simple question: What should I believe in? He's embodied innocence and he's written from experience. He's been inspired by hard facts and also followed his faith, walked a line between sacred and secular. Between chaos and peace of mind.

“I have a very pragmatic demeanour but I think deep within me is a mystic,” Stevens explained to Zan Rowe. “It's a mystic that uses music as his voice. I think the mystic is always communicating through my songs, but it's not really me, it's not my true, ordinary day-to-day self that's represented. I think we're all multiple personalities and each personality serves a function in each environment.”

Nearly every release since 1999 has touched on the theme of spirituality. The most overt was 2004's Seven Swans with songs like ‘Abraham', ‘The Transfiguration' and the title track with its allusions to the Book of Revelation.

Spin magazine summed it up beautifully: “[it sounds] like Elliott Smith after ten years of Sunday school.”

Chapter 5

Boys and their mums

A strong concept or a fabulous backstory can pull a listener through an album.

His latest, Carrie & Lowell, goes deep into Stevens' own fractured upbringing. Carrie is his mother, a schizophrenic with a history of substance abuse, who abandoned Stevens and his siblings when they were young. Lowell is his short-time stepfather, one that grew into a father figure and, incredibly, his label manager.

The Brady Bunch this is not. And it's Carrie who dominates the storyline. On ‘Should Have Known Better', Stevens recollects being abandoned, aged “three, maybe four”, at a video store. “I long to be near you but every road leads to an end,” he sings on ‘Death with Dignity'.

Just when you thought Sufjan Stevens couldn't be more heartbreaking.

The lullaby melodies, however, give the feeling of forgiveness and the emotional pull is so strong you find yourself wondering why (and how) Stevens hasn't written this album before.

“The goal is to never stay the same,” he told Zan. “I always want to be changing and evolving. That's the whole point of life and the whole point of making art is to be constantly moving.”