Extended: Run Rabbit Run performed by Osso

Sufjan Stevens has long been acclaimed as the future of Americana music, and it's easy to see why. His music has always been slightly more complex than many of the other people working in his field; his influences have also extended beyond just folk music. Check out the minimalist tendencies in the arrangements for tracks like "Detroit! Lift Up Your Weary Head!" (neat time signature as well) or "The Predatory Wasp of the Palisades is Out to Get Us!"; you could also note the delicate nature of some of his piano compositions, which suggest the bedroom music of Erik Satie. It's his combination of this with basic folk/country/indie pop tropes that have brought him the audience that he has today; the fact that he's able to wrap this all up in a very pretty package proves more than anything his success as a popular composer.

So to cut to the chase, I was surprised when I was given Run Rabbit Run to review. My immediate thought was that Sufjan Stevens was trying to make what's probably his least accessible work, Enjoy Your Rabbit, more palatable for his NPR-listening audience. Enjoy Your Rabbit is easily his most eclectic and "experimental" (which I use very loosely here) disc. It is filled to the brim with complex pieces based around the Chinese Zodiac, which might better fit on Warp Records' current roster than on his own label. But I was wrong with my assumption; this disc's origins lie with Bryce Dessner of the National. He commissioned Osso (who have worked with a slew of musicians including Kanye, Antony and the Johnsons, and Alice Coltrane) to reinterpret the album; they debuted four tracks off of Enjoy Your Rabbit for the Music Now Festival in Cleveland, Ohio back in 2007. Two years later, the arrangements have been completed and released on Asthmatic Kitty.

However, with the end product, it still feels as though Sufjan's original album has been dumbed down for the NPR crowd. I can't tell if this is due to the nature of the arrangements or the limitations of the string quartet. Many times, the dissonance in some of the compositions seem completely sanded down; other times, the arrangements are much less complex than the original pieces. This isn't always true: Michael Atkinson's arrangement of "Year of the Ox" contains probably the most riveting performance on the disc; Osso violinist Olivier Manchon also contributes a relatively accurate (yet somehow more interesting) version of "Year of the Rat". But many times, the original goal of arranging these pieces relatively accurately comes up short; many times, the percussive elements aren't even approached. I wouldn't even note this failing if it wasn't present in Atkinson's "Year of the Ox", but since one arranger had done it, I would assume that the others might have attempted something similar. Instead, what we are given is a set of very similar abbreviated versions of Sufjan Stevens' album.

This doesn't necessarily mean that the album fails though. What Run Rabbit Run manages to do is indicate more clearly the characteristics (both the strengths and weaknesses) of Stevens' compositions. By removing the particular timbres/textures of the sounds on the original album (as well as the eccentricities, regrettably), the disc brings to light a similar composer: that great American Charles Ives (especially at his most populistic).

Sufjan Stevens stated that his greatest regret for his Enjoy Your Rabbit album is that there is very little human element in the disc; nearly all of the pieces are recorded using synthesizers and other electronic devices. On Run Rabbit Run, we get a good glimpse of what it may have sounded like. However, the disc might have proven stronger if he himself had performed it; especially if the broad nature of his original piece was allowed to be present.