Carl Sandburg (Sufjan Stevens cover)

May 4, 2015 3:39 PM

threeants' lovely cover of Chicago reminded me of this version of another song off that same album that I recorded ten years ago, and made me realize I never posted it to Music. So here it is!

This was a solo recording experiment in 2005, around when I was starting to try and work harder on overdubbing and my electric guitar work; I did the whole thing in one sweaty improvised afternoon in the rented practice space of the band that—I can't recall the timing anymore—was either about to implode or just recently had done so.

The practice space was one of a couple dozen thin-walled rooms across a couple floors of a big old building in downtown Portland, where the space was cheap but in exchange you mostly just hoped no other bands were practicing in adjacent spaces. I think I had to take breaks between a lot of the tracks on here just to let someone work out an especially loud drum or guitar riff a couple units over. And there was no AC, and our room was in the core of the building and so had no windows either. I miss the idea of that place but I don't miss the actual space a bit.

I had been listening to Illinoise a lot that summer; I don't remember if I really planned to work on this song, or if it was what happened when I showed up that day. I'm not even sure what's going on with that weird swooping guitar stuff; was I messing around with a slide? with amp feedback? with both? But I'm glad it happened.

posted by cortex (2 comments total) 1 user marked this as a favorite

It's nice. Has a good dreamy feel to it.
posted by capricorn at 3:49 PM on May 4, 2015


This is chill. I can really feel the energy of the space. And the half jangly half folksy guitar bit ties it up nice.
posted by TheNegativeInfluence at 8:40 PM on May 4, 2015


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