“Pittsfield is probably the most personal song on The Avalanche. It’s based on a lot of my life growing up in a big family where there were a lot of chores and we were always being asked to contribute to the household. To do work and wash the dishes. Work was an important factor in our life, and now that I’ve grown up I have a different understanding of work. It’s not so much about physical exertion but about applying skills to particular tasks. It can be an abstract task…I don’t want to get too Marxist on you, but that song is kind of a rumination on work in the house, you know and chores - that was really important growing up. I wrote a series of verses for that song and then sort of transplanted them in this little town in Illinois that’s very similar to the small town where I grew up in Michigan, after we moved out of Detroit. It’s still very self-conscious because it’s a song about how much work we had to do and how much I rebelled against that. But then I realized that as an adult and as a songwriter, that I have somehow, in me, the inclination to overwork myself that my father had. And I’m just applying it differently. So he would spend five hours mopping the floor and I spend five hours on a vocal line in the studio.”
-Sufjan Stevens
“Pittsfield is probably the most personal song on The Avalanche. It’s based on a lot of my life growing up in a big family where there were a lot of chores and we were always being asked to contribute to the household. To do work and wash the dishes. Work was an important factor in our life, and now that I’ve grown up I have a different understanding of work. It’s not so much about physical exertion but about applying skills to particular tasks. It can be an abstract task…I don’t want to get too Marxist on you, but that song is kind of a rumination on work in the house, you know and chores - that was really important growing up. I wrote a series of verses for that song and then sort of transplanted them in this little town in Illinois that’s very similar to the small town where I grew up in Michigan, after we moved out of Detroit. It’s still very self-conscious because it’s a song about how much work we had to do and how much I rebelled against that. But then I realized that as an adult and as a songwriter, that I have somehow, in me, the inclination to overwork myself that my father had. And I’m just applying it differently. So he would spend five hours mopping the floor and I spend five hours on a vocal line in the studio.” -Sufjan Stevens