The bizarrely quixotic eccentric

From the working-class hero that made us “feel the Illinoise” in 2005 comes another musical time capsule fit for the soundtrack of our dreams – that is, if you have the dreams of a Disney princess.

Sufjan Stevens’ latest effort, “The BQE” (standing for the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway), was just re-released last week from the original November 2007 conceptual live show as a full multimedia package with CD and DVD accompaniment.
Stevens says in the liner notes of the album, “To drive on the BQE is to embrace the anarchy of an amusement theme park.”

Ah, so that explains the Hooper Heroes, images of hula hoop girls named Botanica, Quantus and Electress laced throughout the disc.

That also explains the disjointed feel of the entire package, complete with its political messages advocating the necessity of saving old neighborhoods in Brooklyn and Queens while simultaneously berating the road rage of antisocial American drivers.

The music, which was commissioned by the Brooklyn Academy of Music, shows off Stevens’ compositional flair for mixing classical music form with delicious indie experimentation.

There are sweeping strings as well as plucky, cutesy ones, tinkling pianos and big-top circus orchestras. There is even a weird ditty in one of seven “movement” tracks titled “Traffic Shock” that sounds like theme music to a sensory-overload video game based exclusively in Japan.

The whole thing sounds like Disney’s “Fantasia” mixed with an ominous tune from one of Bjork’s more recently accessible, dark albums, with a call hailing New York as the best city on the planet. Kudos to Stevens for pulling that off, at least.

The DVD, filmed and directed mostly by Stevens, features beautiful borough-scapes of frenetic freeways, Jay-Z billboards, high-rises and hula hoop girls. Images light up to the pulse of instruments as if to say that while the BQE is overbuilt and hazardous for drivers and surrounding neighborhoods alike, at least the dream of New York is definitely still alive.

It calls to mind the gritty trippiness of something vaguely 1970s and oftentimes feels like the best kind of poetic justice.
Weird stuff, Sufjan.