Exclusive: Sufjan Stevens Overcoming “Creative Crisis,” Prepping New Album for 2010
10/22/2009 By Vish Khanna

Though he’s made several references to the fact that his interest in making music has been at an all-time low lately, Sufjan Stevens seems to be on the creative mend. He wowed audiences with about a half-dozen amazing new songs on his recent North American tour and, in a discussion about his new album The BQE, he told Exclaim! that his latest material has been re-invigorating, so much so that we can expect a new album in 2010.

“They’re kind of long-form songs — meandering works-in-progress, but I’m hoping that they’ll eventually find themselves on an album,” Stevens revealed of his latest songs in a recent Exclaim! interview. “So I think that all of that negative view of the state of affairs of the music industry and the demise of the LP and all this — I feel like that’s sort of old news for me. It’s a recent crisis but one I feel that I’m getting around. I think that a lot of the new material that I’m working on is inspiring enough to get me to record it, and maybe have a new record out next year.”

That’s great news for fans concerned that Stevens had lost his muse completely. On the contrary, it sounds as if he’s simply refocused himself by shifting away from his own lofty standards and freeing himself of expectations for ambitious projects like his “50 States” album series.

“I don’t know if I’ll have any success doing that because it’s how I’ve worked for so long," he said. "But generally I’m trying to dissuade any kind of conceptual framework and just write music, love songs, pop songs, and just forget all that conceptual mess.”

Stevens did not reveal when next year he was planning to release his next batch of songs or what it might be called, but you can read more excerpts of Sufjan Stevens’s interview here, as well as stay tuned for the entire interview on Exclaim.ca.

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