Sufjan Stevens - Age Of Adz

Returning to the traditional album format after five years, Sufjan Stevens’ Age Of Adz has been built up to be a renovation of the Detroit-born singer-songwriter’s music in the wake of his voiced dissatisfaction with his own sound - The allegedly offending material can be found on 2005’s highly successful Illinois. As his label claims, ‘Sufjan has stripped away the fabric of narrative artifice for a more primitive approach, emphasizing instinct over craft’. If they say so.

Hit the play button and at first you’ll wonder if it is mere hype; opener ‘Futile Devices’ certainly appears to be pitched perfectly within the realm of what we’ve come to expect from Stevens, his soft vocals floating above serene guitar picking. However, with the arrival of ‘Too Much’ we’re thrown into an entirely different sonic landscape, the calm immediately disrupted by electronic beats and swelling loops that throw up memories of Radiohead circa-Kid A. It might all come across a little clichéd if it weren’t for the infectious sense of optimism that begins to snowball into something truly uplifting.

That is until Stevens decides it’s not for him, distorting his sound once more with unsettling harmonies before throwing it headlong into the cinematic title track, orchestral pomposity with a sense of industry; it’s all quite terrifying. But then, clearly not yet satisfied, he decides instead to twist his way back via grand-scale festive jubilance to the guitar-based sound with which he opened. And bear in mind we’ve only covered the first 15 minutes.

It’s this trend of tactful erraticism that proves to be the mainstay of this 80-minute voyage (yes, it’s long) so hopefully you’ll understand why Age Of Adz isn’t an album that’s easy to ‘sum up’. It’s helpful to consider the record’s inspiration, the artwork of American artist Royal Robertson. Suffering from paranoid schizophrenia, much of his art concerns his apocalyptic visions of extra-terrestrial life and global conspiracy theories, concepts that plagued his mind in the wake of the breakdown of his marriage.

Without wanting to detract from the uniquely personal perspective of Stevens’ music, I’d go as far as to say that a brief acquaintance with Robertson’s life story and a glance at some of his work can tell you more about this album than any review can. While Stevens may not have set out to design a concept album or make Robertson’s story an integral part of this release, consideration of the artist’s plight seems to allow everything to fall into place.

In this new light, the album’s mercurial nature makes sense: the way brief moments of peace, such as in the choral ambience of ‘Now That I’m Older’, are juxtaposed with the driving, down-to-business attitude of ‘Get It Real Get It Right’. Transitions between acoustic beauty and invasive electronica represent much more than artistic innovation; this is the musical expression of a troubled mind, glimpses of satisfaction marred by the violent onset of paranoia and confusion. By the time ‘I Want To Be Well’ is reached, you are so engaged it’s upsetting; the music hurtles onward in mad ecstasy, dancing on the brink of meltdown, Stevens repeatedly pleading to be healed.

And then comes the final track. All 25 minutes of it. This may sound excessive but then how else do you balance out an hour of paranoia? ‘Impossible Soul’ is a gargantuan slice of pure orchestral-electro bliss, gradually spreading from tentative chords into something life-affirmingly joyful with a utopian call to arms that’ll be bouncing round your head for days. It’s a true musical reward at the end of a tough but worthwhile record.

Age Of Adz is not your typical album. It won’t necessarily give you that feel-good experience and you probably won’t enjoy all of it. You won’t fall in love with it at first sitting, you might not even have a spare hour and a half. But it’s a record that deserves just a little bit of the perseverance that must have driven Stevens to create it in the first place. This is true art, genuine expression, music that really makes the effort to speak to its audience. In the end, I found the whole experience quite self-revealing, at times even harrowing. But how many albums of 2010 can anyone say that about? I’ll be sitting down with this one repeatedly for many years to come.

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