It’s been said that writing about music is like dancing about architecture
(impossible and absurd). But what about singing about movies?
Sufjan Stevens and Angelo De Augustine have paired up for a collaborative
project that does just that. A Beginner’s Mind is their debut album that
contains 14 songs (loosely) based on (mostly) popular films. The source
material is highbrow, lowbrow, and everything in between. The music is folksy,
sweet, sincere and harmonically effervescent – Simon & Garfunkel with New
Age flourishes. This album runs the gamut and has fun with it, even while its
songwriters remain fully rooted in the melancholy folk idioms they are known
for.
Daniel Anum Jasper, a pioneer of Ghanian movie poster painting, was commissioned
to paint a series of new works for A Beginner’s Mind. Information about the
project was kept vague so that Mr. Jasper could work without restraint. Mythical
deities and monsters, zombies, skydivers and a celebrated American director
(Jonathan Demme, to whom the album is dedicated) were submitted as visual cues.
The resulting paintings are a graphic simulacrum for the same sense of wonder,
wordplay, and intrigue that shape A Beginner’s Mind. By transforming old
films into vital new songs, Stevens and De Augustine ask us to consider
ourselves from a previously unconsidered vantage point – a new way of seeing
and hearing – an exercise that’s as necessary and relevant now as
it’s ever been.
