Photos by Colin Kerrigan
If you flipped your television to any news program yesterday, you probably witnessed a strange and uniquely American phenomenon: stone-faced television reporters interviewing random people about how long they'd waited in line at big-box chain stores that morning, analyzing the Black Friday shopping landscape with a graveness usually reserved for Middle East conflicts. At Philadelphia's Union Transfer last night, Sufjan Stevens kicked off his Surfjohn Stevens Christmas Sing-A-Long: Seasonal Affective Disorder Yuletide Disaster Pageant on Ice tour, presenting a very different-- but equally excessive, premature, and bizarre-- type of holiday circus.
Given the name of the tour, along with Sufjan's eccentric and well-documented yuletide fanaticism, an odd array of bells and whistles are to be expected at these shows. The singer's ski hat and tinsel-rope accessories were relatively tame in comparison to the costumes of his six band mates, who donned full Santa getups, angel halos, face paint, and giant protruding unicorn horns. Huge strands of Christmas lights were strung across the ceiling of the Cathedral-like venue, and audience members were given lyric booklets to sing along with at the beginning of the performance.
That's because most of the show was, in fact, a sing-along in traditional caroling fashion-- with an improv-theater twist. Every few minutes someone spun a giant pie-wheel scrawled with the names of various beloved holiday songs-- "Wheel. Of. Christmas!"-- at which point Sufjan would order the crowd to turn to a specific page in the booklet and begin singing. He led everyone through slightly off-kilter versions of "Jingle Bells", "Oh Holy Night", Auld Lang Syne", and more, occasionally taking a breather to perform Sufjan Stevens holiday originals like "Sister Winter" or "Mr. Frosty Man".
For the Scrooges among us, the entire charade would be completely insufferable were Sufjan not so aware of the show's ramshackle, "Portlandia"-skit absurdity, a la the slew of madcap Xmas videos he let loose online last week. "I feel like I'm on drugs, but I'm so sober right now," he told the crowd, laughing, before launching into "Auld Lang Syne". Later he said: "I feel like I'm on 'Saturday Night Live' or something-- this is really weird," and asked if the band would do a "serious song" (something he'd request several times throughout the evening). But after each "serious" song he'd be equally exasperated and beg to go back to the sing-along format.
"This is a live workshop," he said at one point, playfully acknowledging the unrehearsed, occasionally fumbly nature of the show. At about 9:30, he checked his watch and began to tell the crowd that it had been "the longest hour of my..." before trailing off and explaining: "I feel like I've run out of Christmas energy and it's only the first night." It was nice to hear that Sufjan could be so deliriously exhausted by his own obsession with Christmas, that the rest of us aren't just a bunch of Grinches. His remedy for holiday fatigue? "Time for another sing-along," he yelled, delighted again. "Wheel! Of! Christmas!"
