By Will Bernish ’13, Contributor
Taking a completely new direction in his music, Detroit-born musician Sufjan Stevens easily blends electronic beats, pounding drums, flute trills, plenty of strings, auto-tune, and folk vocals into an enchanting album. The Age of Adz (released October 12), named for the works of paranoid artist Royal Robertson, is easily a contender for my personal Album of the Year award. It has a pick-up-and-enjoy feel to it, yet every song can be appreciated on a deeper level.
Abandoning the description of a geographical location (like his album Illinois), The Age of Adz is riddled with melancholy lyrics of love, repressed anger, and unfulfilled dreams. “Now That I’m Older” starts off like a hymnal, but quickly changes into a ghostly recollection of memories. Stevens explains a very close relationship between two friends in the opening track, “Futile Devices”, with a little electronica, before “Too Much” explodes with an intro similar to MGMT’s single “Time to Pretend”. That’s as about as far as it goes into familiarity, however, as the rest of the album is completely different than anything I’ve heard, including Stevens’s earlier works.
Sufjan Stevens goes from whispering in the title track, true to tradition, to wailing Thom-Yorke style in “I Want to Be Well,” to being completely auto-tuned in parts of the epic five-part conclusion, “Impossible Soul”. The last song is a jaw-dropping 25 minutes and 35 seconds long, and contains lines as different as the chilling question “Do you want to be afraid?” to the motivational “It’s a long life, only one last chance, couldn’t get much better, do you wanna dance?” Though the auto-tune in the third section is, at first, rather off-putting, it works in the context of the whole song. It easily leads into the upbeat, danceable fourth part, which is perhaps one of the greatest parts of the album.
Though the lyrics vaguely tell a story, the songs themselves have very little flow between them. However, this seems almost intentional. Stevens’ tension builds up not only during songs but throughout the entire album, often transitioning from smooth, hymn-like melodies to sudden bursts of electronic elements, a pattern that sadly becomes a bit too repetitive. The album hits a low point around “Bad Communication,” followed by the highly symbolic but, quite frankly boring, “Vesuvius”, into the slow, wave-sounding “All for Myself”. Thankfully, the last half hour of the album is a redeeming collection of incredible sounds.
Some people condemn Sufjan Stevens for his new style, and it’s easy to see why— it’s just incredibly different than any other album he’s put out. He took a gigantic chance by dropping the banjo from Illinois and replacing it with a computer. I think it’s absolutely great; Stevens is having fun with one of his many musical talents. The Age of Adz is by far one of his most accessible albums to date, and should certainly not be disregarded as “hipster trash.” Just give the title track a listen; you don’t need to have obscure tastes to appreciate Stevens’ genius.
Photo courtesy of rockonthestreets.com