If you're getting tired of hearing about Sufjan Stevens, just think how he feels. After six albums in as many years, near-universal acclaim for his Illinois album, a triumphant follow-up tour, and several other compilation tracks and guest spots in the past year, it's difficult to blame him for sounding a little burned out. So, rather than prolonging the party, on July 11 he's releasing The Avalanche, a collection of outtakes that date to when Illinois was in its planning stages (it was once earmarked to be a double album), as a way of closing the book on the past year. Though Stevens is predictably vague when asked about where his next project will take him, get him going on any other subject-- copyright law, ornithology, punk band the Ex-- and it's difficult to stop him. He may want a break from music, but his enthusiasm for his subjects is harder to quash.

Pitchfork: Congratulations on the non-baby.

Sufjan: Thank you, she's doing really well. An imaginary baby is so much easier than a real baby. No diapers to change.

Pitchfork: That was a strange couple of days.

Sufjan: I think it's hilarious. I'm sometimes a compulsive liar. I think it comes from growing up in a big family. There was a lot of fabrication and deception in my childhood. My sister once ran inside while we were playing and started screaming. She told our mother I'd been hit by a car. And she did it with such drama and hysterics that my mother believed her and ran outside, and I was just playing on the sidewalk. That was the one time my mother hit my sister, but looking back, we think it's the most hilarious thing.

Pitchfork: So you're saying big families breed ridiculous lies and drama?

Sufjan: I think so, yeah.

Pitchfork: Is that where you got your storytelling?

Sufjan: I don't know. Probably. When we were kids that was how we interacted, by telling stories and creating anecdotes. We were all vying for attention, from each other and from our parents, and whoever could perform best would get the most attention. And then, of course, a lot of holidays and family reunions were about retelling and recollecting memories of different events, and everyone has a different version of the same story.

Pitchfork: So it's almost like your family's oral tradition, but focused on stories that weren't always true to begin with.

Sufjan: Yeah, probably. For instance, there's a story of when I stuck a butter knife in an electrical outlet-- which may or may not be true, I was too young to really remember-- but I have a memory of shaking up and down and being sort of electrified. Which might be constructed out of numerous tellings of the story. And my older sister has a version where she heroically grabs me and throws me off of the outlet. You know, saves my life.

Pitchfork: What can you tell me about the material you're doing with Rosie Thomas and Denison Witmer?

Sufjan: If anything, it's Rosie's record. She just did this album with Sub Pop [If Songs Could Be Held], and I think it was a bit traumatic for her because she went to L.A. and was working with a producer, and it became this really slick, hyper-produced collection of songs. I think it was good for her to go through with that, but I don't think she felt she had a real intimate, visceral creative experience. So when she had some time off, she started writing and recording songs on her own. She was in New York, helping me with a lot of singing on The Avalanche, and thought it would be fun if we started working on these songs very casually. It was never really clear what the intentions were, but I think it was therapy for her-- being around her friends, working with familiar faces, recording at home.

Pitchfork: You mention Rosie working on The Avalanche, which appears to be a compilation of leftover tracks from Illinois, but was it more of a collaborative project?

Sufjan: Not really. I was still overseeing everything, and I was still in charge. I did some things I didn't do before: A lot of it was finished and I had recorded the drums myself, and I wasn't really happy with my performance, so I sent them to James McAllister in Seattle and had him perform drum tracks and have a different engineer record it. I hadn't ever sent material to have someone else record it and be in charge of how it would sound.

Pitchfork: So there was a lot of work done to the record once you decided to release it?

Sufjan: About six of the songs were totally finished, and then more than half of it was modified. The editing, re-recording, and engineering I did afterward redeemed a lot of the material.

Pitchfork: Did you have so many versions of "Chicago" originally?

Sufjan: Yes. The only one I didn't have was the real crazy one that's kind of all over the place ["Multiple Personality Disorder version"]. We started recording that one after a couple of weeks of touring. We had some time off and James, my drummer, was in town, and we decided it would be funny to kind of deconstruct the song. The adult-contemporary easy listening version was going to be on the record but I cut it [at the] last minute. And I'd always had an acoustic recording. Those are old.

Pitchfork: When did you finally decide this appendix was worth releasing?

Sufjan: I'm not so sure it is, even now. I think I decided that the material was interesting to me, so maybe it would be interesting to an audience. I was going to post them online as free downloads, but I'd spent so much time reworking them and editing them that I felt there was a value to them, that it wouldn't honor the songs enough to have them as downloads.

Pitchfork: Would you have released them if Illinois wasn't so well-received?

Sufjan: I probably wouldn't have. With Michigan, I had a few outtakes, and I just posted those for free, because I didn't really have an audience then. There must be, subconsciously, some correlation over whether there's an audience for your work-- does your work have value? I think it's gross that correlation exists...

Pitchfork: It's kind of inevitable, though.

Sufjan: It is, and it's kind of sad. I felt that there was enough material to warrant the release of an album.

Pitchfork: After you did build up an audience, with Michigan and Seven Swans, your tours became more ambitious. Did you have live performance in mind when you were writing these songs?

Sufjan: No, not at all. The cheerleading thing came after I'd written the songs. I was pretty nearsighted in the construction of Illinois. I spent a lot of time alone, a few months in isolation working on my own and in the studio. I let things germinate and cultivate independently, without thinking about an audience or a live show at all. The live show, for me, was trying to present the pageantry of the album live. I don't know if I ever did that successfully.

Pitchfork: Was there a point where you decided the double album would be too much?

Sufjan: It was a practical thing. When I was talking to Michael [Kaufmann] and Lowell [Brams] at Asthmatic Kitty, we decided it would be presumptuous or even arrogant to release it as a double album, and a lot of it wasn't worth listening to it all the way through. I think there's a bit of release that happens when you cut an album down, create some space, and then release outtakes. There's a greater understanding and a prioritization, so that people, myself included, come to The Avalanche with a sense of release, like, "Oh, well, I understand why these were cut."

Pitchfork: Is The Avalanche a way of getting closure?

Sufjan: That's a good way of putting it.

Pitchfork: Now that all this material is out and the tour is over, are you breathing a sigh of relief?

SS. I do, I feel kind of rejuvenated, and there's a sense of resolve. Especially when dealing with the outtakes, because you're always wondering, "Is this particular song worth the time and effort?" Sometimes yes and sometimes no. I've been trying to do less music now, and spending more time doing other things, giving myself a period of dormancy. That's kind of what this album's about-- it's sort of buying time for me. It's like I'm under the illusion that I've been productive, when it's actually all old material.

Pitchfork: Let me ask you about ideas like the 50 states plan and Enjoy Your Rabbit, which, in a way, remind me of writing prompts, and I know you have a writing background. Do these sort of structures force you to work?

Sufjan: They motivate good working habits. I think they inspire me in some ways, or at least are a means of inspiration, by allowing me to focus on a particular subject. It's sort of like creating obstructions, giving myself certain terms within which to work.

Pitchfork: Has all the research changed your listening habits?

Sufjan: I think now I listen more as a technician and a researcher. I'm always hearing music in terms of what I can take out of it, and I think I've always listened like that. I have a hard time just listening for pleasure. I'm much less about instinct, and more of a utilitarian listener. Like, what is the use of this song? What is the usefulness of this melody for this theme or statement? What are they doing that's unusual sounding, and how can I learn from that?

Pitchfork: So this recording has demystified the listening process for you?

Sufjan: Honestly, I'm from the generation that's always been recording, from the very beginning. I learned to play the guitar on the four-track. I started listening to music at a time when people were doing recording at home, when the discussion about songwriting correlated to the discussion about producing and engineering. I think that's a description of my generation.

Pitchfork: Do you research music in the way you do for historical facts?

Sufjan: I'm not so involved in how things are created. Often I'm in awe of the sonic quality of a particular moment in a song, like, how did they record this here? What kind of guitar are they using, or how are woodwinds implemented in this arrangement? I never get too involved in technical research, because I'm actually pretty lo-fi. The music is the imperative. It has the upper hand. I think all music, even though it's an abstraction, does motivate a particular meaning. Then it's the job of the musician to honor that meaning and to somehow implement lyrical material that can accommodate that emotional environment.

Pitchfork: So when you're researching, you're not looking for any sort of personal relevance in those facts at all?

Sufjan: Not necessarily. I'm not a great researcher-- my habits are kind of hit-or-miss. I think I'm more resourceful than most people, but I don't always run after the best material.

Pitchfork: The Avalanche seems less grounded in personal details than Illinois.

Sufjan: It's less personal. That's why I don't like it as much. I don't really have an emotional connection to Saul Alinksy, or Clyde Tombaugh who discovered Pluto, or Saul Bellow. They were figures of history that became icons, and I felt emotionally distant from them. The most personal one is "Pittsfield". That one's based on a lot of memories from my childhood, and I sort of transplanted them into this miserable little town in Illinois. Pittsfield is very similar to some of the small towns we grew up around in Northern Michigan. And "The Mistress Witch of McClure" song is based on some...[pause] experiences that I had.

Pitchfork: Would you care to elaborate on that at all?

Sufjan: Probably not, it might be a little incriminating. [laughs]

Pitchfork: Well, do you find any certain details or values in your research that you consider definitively American?

Sufjan: That's hard. You probably could answer that better than I could. I think that a sense of ownership and possession, of land and ideas, is something that I'm obsessed with.

Pitchfork: Like the Native American inside [the booklet for] The Avalanche?

Sufjan: I think so. There's definitively a sense of claiming land, and then applying names at the expense of other cultures and other people. I think that's definitively American-- the way that we feel entitled to a particular plot of land. And then it also relates to ideas and concepts, and we feel entitled to our opinions, and to free speech. Any person is entitled to say what he or she wants, those are our First Amendment rights. That's sort of an abstraction, but I think it applies to my life in that I have every right to explain what it means to be American, or what it means to be from Michigan or Illinois. And honestly, I'm not qualified at all to make those statements. But for some reason I still feel entitled, and I think that entitlement is an American characteristic.

Pitchfork: Do you think that sense of entitlement gets out of hand?

Sufjan: It's used and misused in our culture. That feeling of entitlement leads to laziness and apathy and greed. Everyone feels like they're due their privileged lot in life. Everyone can be rich and famous, and that's actually a real dysfunction.

Pitchfork: Does that ethos translate in the way you record, or your label and the way you do business in the world?

Sufjan: Maybe, but I'm just as culpable as anyone else in terms of wanting privileges and wanting money, so I try to really check that and be mature about the decisions I make, to use discretion at every level. Especially with my record label, we're very co-operative. We try not to prioritize artists and [give some] more time and energy than others. Staying on Asthmatic Kitty has been really important to me, because I'm surrounded by my friends and family, who are less willing to deal with my ego.

Pitchfork: Asthmatic Kitty does seem pretty collaborative.

Sufjan: It is. Everyone helps each other, and we're always playing on each other's records. When we tour, we often tour together. Liz Janes and John Ringhofer from Half-Handed Cloud have both played in my band. It can be a little insulated, and we need to watch that, but we're all great friends. It's important to maintain that network of friendship around you to keep you accountable.

Pitchfork: Let me ask you about the different versions of "Chicago". One has that title of the "adult-contempo easy listening version", and while it does have that kind of feel to it-- and the title is somewhat tongue-in-cheek-- it's not altogether different from the acoustic version or even the version that ended up on Illinois. I'm wondering where you see yourself in terms of genre.

Sufjan: The Avalanche feels pretty adult contemporary to me [laughs].

Pitchfork: The entire thing?

Sufjan: I think so. There's a couple moments that have more of an edge, but I'm a little concerned for that kind of trajectory-- the sort-of easy listening, NPR, educated/sophisticated listener.

Pitchfork: So it was a dig at yourself when you titled it that way.

Sufjan: Yeah, because I think there is something very "easy listening" about my music. My colleague at Asthmatic Kitty, Michael Kaufman, comes from a noise/improv scene, and he's always making fun of me for being so accessible. He's been challenging me to sort of undermine that, how to responsibly sabotage the listenability of my music in order to challenge it. And I think right now, creatively, I need to go somewhere where I'm taking greater risks. [With] The Avalanche, I think the songs are interesting, I think they're successful, and I think there's a lot to learn from them. But I also think it's a bit too much of the same stuff over and over again.

Pitchfork: Can you think of any examples where you've tried to "sabotage" your music responsibly?

Sufjan: I love the electric guitar, and the Ex is one of my favorite bands, this punk band from The Netherlands. And in college, I was blown away by Sonic Youth, Daydream Nation, Sister-- that kind of guitar-rock is still very musical but very dark, heavy, and dirty. I think there's moments where I'm playing around with that element, and everything is harmonious and melodic, then there'll be this undermining chaotic guitar line that rises up out of it, trying to sort of sabotage the harmony. I really want to experiment with that exclusively and get rid of all the pretty, listenable acoustic stuff.

Pitchfork: So when you do dive back into music, will it be more dissonant?

Sufjan: Maybe. Not my next project, but in the future. I think I need to earn that first. You can't really do anything reflexively, because it's not necessarily the most responsible thing to do.

Pitchfork: You've been really successful within an indie rock context, but you're aware you're coming from a pretty accessible singer/songwriter place. Do you find it weird that you've been so embraced by underground audiences?

Sufjan: I think it's weird at all that anyone's interested in what I'm doing.

Pitchfork: That's very modest, but you know what I mean, certainly?

Sufjan: I just find public interest in general to be strange. Like, why does anyone like anything, and how is there a consensus of opinion that's so far-reaching? It's just a phenomenon of...I don't know what it is, of media and communication, really. I hope that it's a result of good art, good songwriting, but there's a lot more to it and I just don't know how to reckon with it, so I tend to ignore it.

Pitchfork: You have something of a classical background, but you've had a lot of experience in folk and rock. Will you continue to work in your current aesthetic, trying to conflate the two?

Sufjan: I wonder if my songwriting process is a constant reconciliation between pop music and classical music. I think the direction I'm going to go next is to work with a small string and horn ensemble and do more composition and arrangement.

Pitchfork: Speaking of public interest, with the Superman incident on the cover of Illinois, were you surprised that you had to remove the image?

Sufjan: Yeah, and this is another case of possession of ideas. I was shocked. Superman is so ubiquitous, everyone should own and love and have as much ownership of Superman as anyone else. That happened again with this record, because I had a reference to some Woody Guthrie lyrics in one of my songs, and I found out that they're actually protected under copyright law. It was "This Land Is Your Land", which I thought was a public domain song. But when I finished the record and everything was mastered, I found out these lyrics were protected under copyright, and we had to pay a fee to reference them.

Pitchfork: I guess as long as there's an author and someone's protecting the estate, they're going to look out for its interests.

SS. Yeah. I did a little research and found a whole other controversy about the song with this online satirical site called Jibjab that used the song to poke fun at George Bush and John Kerry during the [2004 presidential election].

Pitchfork: How do you feel about that in terms of your own material? Say if someone took "Chicago" and changed the lyrics to be more political?

Sufjan: It's definitely not public domain. I have a publisher and I make money from the publishing of the songs. That's a big part of an income, so I'm not going to pretend that I'm that socialistic about my music. But I'm not so possessive about it that I would sue anyone who misused it. If someone were to sample my work, I would have a hard time seeking payment for that. I don't even have a problem with people illegally downloading that stuff.

Pitchfork: Not at all?

Sufjan: Not really. I don't need to be selling hundreds of thousands of records to have a career. It doesn't really hinder me.

Pitchfork: Were there any plans to tour behind the material on The Avalanche?

Sufjan: I don't think so. I don't think it's worth touring. There's one song...

Pitchfork: You sound really, really excited about this record.

Sufjan: [Laughing] I'm excited about it, but from a technical point of view. I like some of the songs. I think there's one song I would play live, which is "The Mistress Witch From McClure". But it just sounds like another song I wrote. I need to be less deprecating; I should be more promotional.

Pitchfork: You say "these songs sound like songs I wrote," as if that's a surprise to you. Are you getting tired of your sound?

Sufjan: Yes. I'm getting tired of my voice. I'm getting tired of...the banjo. I'm getting tired of...the trumpet.

Pitchfork: Do you think that's because you've been so prolific over the past few years, or are you just getting restless?

Sufjan: I'm writing too much, for sure. I think it's important to get a season of rest, and I'm not so sure I've done that. That's why I'm not touring, I'm only playing one festival this summer. I have the summer off. I need to ride my bike more.

Pitchfork: I wanted to ask you about the "Lord God Bird" project you did for NPR, and how that came about. Were you approached by the documentarians?

Sufjan: Yeah, the writers were interested in doing a project with me, and they didn't have any particular story yet. They just wanted to do a piece accompanied by a song. They pitched a couple of ideas-- I don't even remember what they were-- and they said, "Which of these is the most interesting material for a song?" And I said the extinct woodpecker is kind of interesting, and they agreed.

There's this controversy over whether it was actually sighted. They don't have any clear, substantial evidence to prove that it still exists. They have a lot of sightings, and no photographs, and a sort of blurry low-res video of a large bird that might be the ivory-billed woodpecker, but it could also in fact be a pileated woodpecker with, like, albino traits. I think it exists. I want to believe it. I want to believe it so badly. I've been trying to organize an expedition to see it, but it's sort of past its season. You have to go in early spring. Now there's too much foliage, and it's too hot and humid. Maybe next year.

Pitchfork: Are you an ornithology expert now, or are you picking this up from the stories?

Sufjan: No, I'm not, but this story has instigated a small obsession with birds. I had to do a lot of reading and research, and I started ordering bird guides, field guides, and I've started to do a little bit of bird-watching in the park. This past weekend I went to the Hamptons, to Montauk, which is the end of Long Island, to get some rest and relaxation but also some bird watching. I think I might have gone a little overboard, because I have three field guides, I'm saving up for a pair of binoculars, and I want to buy the elephant folio book of Audubon prints of birds of North America. So I've probably invested a little too much time in this.

Pitchfork: Which states would be best for bird-watching?

Sufjan: Texas and Florida have the most diverse birds. But I'm definitely not going to do a record about Texas birds or Florida birds. Florida will be about Walt Disney World or something.

Pitchfork: Do you think your passion for the subjects overrides your passion for the music?

Sufjan: Sometimes. I think I was more interested in the Chicago World's Fair in 1893 than I was the song that I wrote. For me it was a challenge to write a song that evoked that kind of passion and interest in that strange historical event. Sometimes there's a convergence-- passion for the material and the subject and musical conviction-- and when there [is] it can be so compelling. That's the challenge, I think, of art.

Pitchfork: Are you more interested in the storytelling than the music?

Sufjan: I guess intuitively. I think it's who we are as human beings, storytelling. We speak anecdotally. People love to talk about themselves and about their lives and about their day, and everything has a narrative interest to it. That said, I think music is a supernatural kind of abstract form that transcends all of that. There is nothing more incredible and moving and appealing than good music, and it cannot always be reduced to a story, to exposition. It's so much more abstract and brilliant.

Pitchfork: In the booklet for The Avalanche, there aren't many pictures of places, but you did take a picture of the sign outside of Arturo's Tacos [in Chicago].

Sufjan: [laughing] Yeah.

Pitchfork: Are you a fan?

Sufjan: Yeah! No, they're ok.

Pitchfork: They're ok?!

Sufjan: I don't even really like tacos. You?

Pitchfork: I was thrilled to see that in there.

Sufjan: It was kind of random. I had a lot of other shots. I had shots of the Superman museum that I wasn't allowed to use, of course.

Pitchfork: Was it weird to see those places after you'd written about them?

Sufjan: Sometimes, yeah. I'd actually never been to Metropolis, [Ill.], I'd just written the song based on stories I'd heard about it-- and it's the most depressing little town I've ever seen. The Superman [statue] has lost luster, the paint is chipping, and the museum is really old and dank. That's kind of the phenomenon when you have a fictionalized account of something, or even the memory of something, and you confront it in reality. There's always a discrepancy between the two.

Pitchfork: Were there any other places where you saw that discrepancy?

Sufjan: There's not much left of the World's Fair grounds. I think most of the stuff is more triumphant and has more pageantry in song than it does in reality.

Pitchfork: It's interesting that Illinois sounds so triumphant and Michigan is so much more downcast.

Sufjan: Illinois is a projection of my enthusiasm and my imagination for a particular place that was a bit unfamiliar to me. It's really a fabrication. Michigan is more based on memory, so it's more introverted and melancholy.

Pitchfork: Was Illinois an escape compared to where you grew up?

Sufjan: Oh yeah. I grew up in Detroit, which is the exact opposite of Chicago. There's nothing going on there. I went to school in western Michigan, just a few hours from Chicago, so if we ever wanted to go to shows or just get away to the city, it was to Chicago. I think my first rock show ever was there.

Pitchfork: Who was it?

Sufjan: It was this really funny little local Irish band called the Drovers. I was in college. I loved hippy Irish folk/rock music at the time.

Pitchfork: Do you remember the bands and venues you saw at that time?

Sufjan: I went to the Metro a lot. I can't remember the theater, but I saw Sonic Youth in this big theater with the Ex. That was incredible. I have to write an essay about it.

Pitchfork: Who are you writing it for?

Sufjan: It's for a book of essays this guy is putting together, about different shows people have gone to that changed their lives.

Pitchfork: It sounds like the Ex were really formative for you. Were you listening to more folk stuff before you were exposed to them?

Sufjan: Yeah, I was listening to a lot of songwriting early on. I grew up on popular radio-- there wasn't a lot of diversity. And then in college somebody loaned me Sonic Youth's Sister, and that's when I started listening to rock and roll. I was going to this show to see Sonic Youth, but the Ex were opening and they blew me away. I wasn't really interested in Sonic Youth after that. I remember it being really dirty and energetic, and so unassuming. There was nothing going on, there was no pretension about it. It was all about instinct. You could tell they were untrained musicians.

They started this band in the late 1970s during the punk movement, and they were a serious anarchist band that was basically playing for squatter's rights. They were very unskilled, but over the years they developed a unique sound, unlike any punk music at the time. The rhythms were very interesting. The drummer, she's just incredible, and they would incorporate Hungarian folk music and scenes like that in their work. It was a hybrid of all these styles and traditions. It was really dirty, but it was also very musical and political and angry, but it had softness to it because the drummer was this very sweet and thin woman who basically kept the band together and was in charge.

Pitchfork: You said earlier you're a technical listener. Was that the first time you empathized with the instinct instead of the playing?

Sufjan: I think I was just in awe of the guitar sounds, and how they played together.

Pitchfork: Can you tell us anymore about this book? Who's in it, when it's coming out?

Sufjan: I don't know...I missed my deadline, so I'm a little embarrassed about it.

Pitchfork: I get the feeling you're the kind of guy who beats himself up when he misses a deadline.

Sufjan: Well, yeah. Especially writing. Fiction has always been a thorn in my side, because I've always wanted to be a writer but I can't seem to really do it.

Pitchfork: Well, your fallback has worked out so far.

Sufjan: Yeah, Plan B has worked out fine.