Send "Sufjan Stevens " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Sputnikmusic |
 You know the end of Return of the King, when Denethor is mad with power and about to destroy Faramir by setting him on fire, only to realize he's not dead and so, unable to reconcile himself, he hurls his flaming body unto the charging armies of Mordor? Ladies and Gentlemen, I present Sufjan Stevens, Steward of Gondor, and his Battle for Middle Earth, The Age of Adz. I will let you in on a secret: I did not particularly care for Come On, Feel the Illinoise. Yes, objectively, it’s wonderful; it is the work of an ambitious songwriter who also happens to be a lyrical virtuoso, but in essence, I felt a disconnect between the mildly obtuse album it was and the batshit composer behind it. Like, I dug the horns, but where was the risk, man? Well, here it is: if you were like me and found Illinois on the conservative side, Age of Adz is like Sufjan playing Russian Roulette by himself and five of the six chambers have bullets. If we’re keeping the Lord of the Rings analogy going, Faramir is all of music, which of course isn't dead, but since Denethor/Sufjan believes it to be dead, he must destroy its corpse along with himself (This probably makes Matt Berninger Gandalf, but I digress). And destroy both he does, crafting post-modern Frankensteins of pastoral folk, electronic bleep-bloops, orchestral swells, dance-pop, hip-hop, whatever. I admit what got me interested in Age of Adz was Sptunik staffer Alex Silveri’s characterization of the current Sufjan, of him holed up in a windowless room, losing hold on an already-shaky grip of reality, letting his wild imagination consume him. But while the image of an addled brain without a focus is supposed to help us imagine a Sufjan we should abandon, I find the opposite to be true. Sufjan may have lost his sanity, but in creating the deliciously mad Age of Adz, Sufjan Stevens has become one of the most vital artists of our era. Because on Age of Adz, Sufjan is doing what very few mainstream indie artists are doing right now: he’s pushing it. He’s seeing just how far this style, this skin that he’s never quite felt comfortable in, can be stretched. There’s something inherently beautiful in all this, watching Sufjan burn his past and arise from the ashes a fucking lunatic. Sufjan may compose Age of Adz through the lens of The Apocalypse, but the apocalypse is his own. From “Vesuvius:” “Sufjan, follow the path, it leads to an article of imminent death. Sufjan, follow your heart, follow the flame, or fall on the floor.” Sufjan follows everything- path, heart, flame- and falls on the floor in the most ungraceful, glorious way imaginable. Age of Adz does not. Rather, it soars, exploiting every inch of its vast canvas to deliver winner after desperate, existential winner. Its sprawling, eight-minute title track puts Sufjan in conflict with an insistently dire hook and an argumentative orchestra, which fits, considering it’s the manifestation of Sufjan’s moral crisis. ”We see you trying to be something else that you're not, we think you're not” he manages to get out between insistent cat calls and symphonic whistles. Sufjan may have lost his marbles (I tend to take him at his word when he says he’s “not fucking around”), but in removing his restraints and indulging every whim of his beleaguered head, he discovers ideas with ridiculous scope and incredible power....full text |
| Nme |
| After four years of terrible silence following 2005's Kerouac-esque baroque opus, the sprawling 'Illinois', high king of epic pop Sufjan Stevens has burst back onto the scene with a bang - the double-whammy announcements of a new EP ('All Delighted People') AND a new album ('The Age Of Adz'), leaving indie kids everywhere scrambling for their inhalers. The latter, with its decidedly unsettling cover art paying homage to schizophrenic artist Royal Robertson, is a far cry from the cutesy, pastel-hued retro postcards that adorned 'Illinois’ and 'Michigan’, adding weight to those rumours of Sufjan taking a U-turn into extra-terrestrial electronic ambience. But what does 'The Age Of Adz' really sound like - and is the rainbow winged, all-American cub-scout Sufjan we once knew long gone? continued... Futile Devices Put down your pitchforks, Sufjan purists - all is well on 'The Age Of Adz''s bucolic opener, which meshes gently-undulating, Bon Iver-esque guitar with Sufjan's hushed vocals; the overall effect is of a lost gem from Sufjan's 2004 folk classic 'Seven Swans'. Too Much Erm, but don't relax completely - 'Too Much' is a lush slice of jerky electronica, with burbling synths, discordant horns and Sufjan's lusty yelps recalling, bizarrely, Bjork's 'Homogenic'. Free download here. Age Of Adz Like the artwork of Royal Roberts, 'Age of Adz' is the apocalypse set to music, all wild 'Kid A' horns and claustrophobic video game bleeps, like SOS signals being transmitted through a Nintendo Gameboy. And Sufjan sounds distinctly unbalanced - yowling through a Tannoy-esque filter, with all the deranged passion of a fire-and-brimstone gospel preacher....full text |
| Daydreamstationmusic |
| Sufjan Stevens – The Age of Adz Release Date: October 12, 2010 Rating: ***** out of ***** (Essential Listening!) Wow. During my college days, when Sufjan Stevens started to make his mark in the indie world (think Michigan, Seven Swans, and Illinois), I arbitrarily chose not to follow his career. I’d hear a pretty song now and again and realize that there was nothing wrong with Sufjan, but there’s only so many artists you can take time to explore, and he just wasn’t a priority. I wound up getting sucked back into his music thanks to the inclusion of standout track “Chicago” on the Little Miss Sunshine Soundtrack alongside personal favorites Devotchka, but two months ago he wouldn’t have made any list of my favorite artists. I admit that the recent All Delighted People EP, his first release since I began ravenously devouring and covering music via this blog, made a positive impression on me, but the highlight was a twelve-plus minute piece that he actually wrote almost a decade ago. I could hardly take that as a signifier that his next record would be to my liking. Advance singles “Too Much” (available in last week’s New Music Roundup) and “I Walked” did turn out to be persistent earworms, and I couldn’t help but be tingle with anticipation when I finally got my paws on a copy of The Age of Adz, his new full-length. Nothing, however, prepared me for this. The Age of Adz has the most delicious, impressive, memorably resonant electronic texturing this side of LCD Soundsystem’s “Someone Great” or anything off Kid A. Yes, it’s got Sufjan’s trademark epic, soaring choirs, and they’re fantastic. Yes, it’s got seven songs that clock in above five minutes in length, including a twenty-five minute long closer that briefly dives into what has to be Auto-Tune, among myriad other stylistic statements. Yes, his adventurous sonic layering and song construction recalls nothing so much as last year’s Animal Collective gem Merriweather Post Pavilion. However, nothing defines this album like its wildly successful syncretic fusion of Sufjan’s folk background and his absolute perfectionism as a twenty-first century producer/composer. Every single bleep, blurt, fizz and pop of the artfully-constructed electronic backdrop is part of a carefully conducted orchestra, and the end result is a symphony like no other. This is an album that demands high-quality headphones or spendy speakers and a thorough, focused listen from beginning to end. After your fourth or fifth time through, it’s okay to begin to use it as background music, as its ebb and flow will become comforting to you, but you must start by familiarizing yourself with its exotic yet accessible elemental makeup. I’ll leave a taste for you at the bottom because I need you to know what it sounds like, but you’ll want to quickly proceed to purchase the full album, as this is one of the five or ten albums released each year (and perhaps the best among them in 2010) that truly deserves to be judged and enjoyed as a complete entity, rather than simply parsed for mixtape fodder....full text |
Sufjan Stevens lyrics
