Let me begin by saying that Seven Swans is a fabulous album, about on par with Michigan, with a more digestible running time on its side. The album is structured quite purposefully, especially for a release that, in essence, is composed of outtakes from a recording session. The first three songs introduce the hope and beauty Stevens describes throughout Seven Swans, after which four songs bookend the album’s glorious centerpiece, “Sister”, and three songs remain to conclude the disc (most memorably as a chorus rises into a haunting chant of “He is our Lord” on the penultimate title track).
Two of the three songs that open and close the album strike me particularly each time I listen to the album, those being “The Dress Looks Nice On You” and “In the Devil’s Territory” at the beginning, and “Seven Swans” and “The Transfiguration” at the end. For now, I’ll discuss the former pair, which, taken as a couple, encapsulate Seven Swans‘ overall dynamic, with “The Dress Looks Nice On You” covering the lighter acoustic/banjo side of Stevens and “In the Devil’s Territory” exhibiting his more dynamic side through its complex instrumentation (theremins!).
“The Dress Looks Nice On You” exemplifies the notion that art is fundamentally a suggestive medium. Here, nothing is spelled out for the listener; the lyrics are too vague to speak to anything in particular, although they are quite evocative. Stevens’ words, though, unlike too many singer/songwriters’, do not hide under the guise of inscrutability in order to hint, not tell. Rather than point at a specific meaning which is nearly impossible to grasp, Stevens alludes to certain moods (rejuvenation, promise/hope) that apply in manifold situations, making his messages universal while still keeping much a secret.
The music, meanwhile, must be described more simply: it is blissful, heavenly, marvelous. A simple finger-picking pattern repeats on an acoustic guitar every five seconds, three notes standing out as the song’s basic chord progression, and one especially high note emerging twice each time around, beautifully lifting the song. Stevens finds an appropriate medium with his voice, which is more than “soothing”, but less than “uplifting”. The opening lines to the song are, in their simplicity, some of my favorite lyrics of the year so far: “I can see a lot of life in you / I can see a lot of bright in you / And I think the dress looks nice on you“. A minute into the song, the banjos enter with a countermelody to the guitar’s continual plucking, interrupted briefly by the bridge, and returning before the song ends after only two minutes and a half.
“The Dress Looks Nice On You”’s abrupt halt, however, is appropriate; this way, “In the Devil’s Territory” serves to complete it, to lend it the climax it was not given. Guitar, banjo, and piano weave together powerfully as Stevens describes the “long, long time” he stayed in the devil’s territory “to see you, to meet you at last”. As with “The Dress Looks Nice Into You”, the lyrics never solidify into something entirely tangible, but they expressively examine specific moods (temptation/desire, fear, searching). The songs differ most notably, though, as the song climaxes two-and-a-half minutes in, with a theremin and keyboard rising together, before the female voice enters again with the same lines as before, until, again, the theremin enters, this time with bass, and the song closes in dissipated, almost estranged beauty before the album progresses into its next phase.
These two songs (and the rest of the album) are evidence that Stevens is one of the most focused singer/songwriters of our time. He has proven that he can churn out song after song of brilliant material, working at the consistently impressive pace of a Stephin Merritt, yet maintaining the precision of a Joni Mitchell. Truth be told, if anyone is going to write an album for each United State of America, it will be him.