Sufjan Stevens is one of the finest songwriters to emerge in the past 10 years

I'VE been going to gigs for 40 years. I know greatness when I see and hear it. It doesn't come along all that often.

Sufjan Stevens

I'VE been going to gigs for 40 years. I know greatness when I see and hear it. It doesn't come along all that often.

I've seen many, many brilliant shows, but greatness, that indefinable thing that is so far ahead of the pack, so original, with a magical kind of performance that seems to make time stand still -- you learn to treasure those. I certainly didn't expect to see it twice in one night, last Sunday.

The first was Jimmy Cliff at the Reggae for Recovery concert at Brisbane's Riverstage. From the moment he soared up to those opening notes on Many Rivers to Cross, I knew I was hearing one of the great voices. I never saw Sam Cooke or Otis Redding but I've seen Stevie Wonder and now Cliff, so I count myself as truly fortunate.

Then it was on to The Tivoli to see Sufjan Stevens, the American I rank as one of the finest and most original of songwriters to emerge in the past 10 years. This is not "easy" music, and in the case of latest album The Age of Adz, quite challenging indeed. It is music that takes time and concentration before it reveals itself.

Stevens doesn't receive much radio play and yet this was a sold-out show of intensely devoted fans, the kind of people who know all the words and can sing along, even with one of his elongated melodies.

The performance itself was dazzling, musically and visually. With The Age of Adz he has moved away from songs written on guitar to electronic settings, recreated here by his 10-piece band, with keyboards, trombones, electronic percussion, drums, guitars, keys, and two female backing singers/dancers.

The look was kind of retro-futurist: The Jetsons in black, fluoro orange and lime, bouncing off the comic book sci-fi and apocalyptic visions of the "outsider" artist, Royal Robertson, who inspired the album and whose work provided the video backdrop.

Stevens used the folky Heirloom to "cleanse the palate", but most of the set was devoted to the new album, concluding with the 25-minute Impossible Soul, by which time Sufjan was wearing an outer-space head-dress, the girls in flashing neon and with balloons and coloured paper floating down from the ceiling on the audience.

Imagine a collision between Sun Ra Arkestra, The Beach Boys' Smile and a sci-fi disco freak-out and you get some idea of the complexity, although that doesn't convey the originality of Stevens's work, nor his ability to draw that all together into a coherent and always entertaining whole.

More and more, popular music seems to be less and less about taking chances, less about searching for the strikingly original, with nuances, colour, and great, great tunes.

It was once. In the hands of Sufjan Stevens it still is.