Great songs about roads? Kraftwerk’s ‘Autobahn’. Bobby Troup’s ‘Route 66’. Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Highway 29’. Erm, Chris Rea’s ‘Road To Hell’?
They’re usually American, fuelled by yankee, individualist open-road mythology. It’s difficult to write a song about a British road that doesn’t automatically sound dreary and provincial – although Doves took that in-built bathos and made it a strength, with the claustrophobic ‘M62 Song’.
Sufjan Stevens’ ‘The BQE’ – an ambitious film and music project inspired by the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway – looks to be the former kind: a celebration of the infinite possibility of roads, rather than an expression of terror at the limits they impose.
It comes out on October 20, as a DVD and accompanying soundtrack CD. And judging by this tantalising trailer, it looks like it’s going to be a lush, technicolour affair, taking its visual cue from MGM musicals. Exciting…