SUFJAN STEVENS - The Age Of Adz
Tuesday, October 19, 2010 at 06:00PM 
Everyone has a friend like this—the guy who has to take everything too far. Jokes, stories, innuendos...everything is an exercise in boundary pushing. Sufjan is like that friend set to music. Why have a couple of backing vocalists when you could use a choir? Why one drummer when you could have three? Why use five words in a song title when you could use thirty-five?!
If there's anything that's saved him from descending into a total self-imposed oblivion of excess, it's his ability to remind us at key points of just how potent he can be with all the layers stripped away. It's amazing how one three-minute tune like "John Wayne Gacy, Jr." can set right a (let's face it) bloated, under-edited 22-track, 74-minute concept album like 2005's Illinois. It's not as though it's the only good song on the album—far from it—but with only a guitar and a pair of voices, it is one of the most affecting. So even when he's leading something that sounds like the score to a climactic battle scene in a Planet Of The Apes Broadway musical, we're able to take the moment as part of a larger array of expression. The brand new album, The Age of Adz, also has one such low-key, pendulum balancing song—but it’s also its opener, "Futile Devices". After that brief moment of comfort, Sufjan asks the listener to hold tight and feel the Gs. And so the density begins.
Stevens is ridiculously at home weaving mazes of sighing voices, bleating horns, sheets of strings, and especially this time out, squealing and gurgling electronics. His touch is precise, his demeanour calm and composed. When it all comes together, like on highlights "Get Real Get Right" and the head-nodding "Too Much", it presents a strong case for him being in command of a musical language all his own—one that is intriguingly positioned between Gershwin and Four Tet. It's gorgeous, hooky, head-engaging and classically inspired, yet all refined by modern tastes.
But, never happy to play it safe, Stevens' taste for excess threatens often to derail the record. It seems a bit of an obvious thing to pick on the album's 25-minute closer here, "Impossible Soul", but when the sign says "Kick Me"... Besides, plenty of the 'shorter' tunes—the eight-minute title track being one of them—would also gain much from a more concise approach. The killer moments are there, for sure, but they’re caught in an endless bait-and-switch with the listener: a tender hook here buying six minutes of auto-tune tomfoolery later.
It's now that I'm reminded of Rush, a band whose hyperbolic music landed them in the crosshairs of many a critic, while blowing the minds of legions of young fans for whom the group's boundary pushing was a benchmark of daring, technique and brawn. I know this, because I was (and am still) one of those fans. Looking at The Age of Adz (and indeed much of Sufjan's moves in the last half of this decade) in this light is helpful. Pushing things too far is always gonna be polarizing, but we desperately need artists like this around. This guy’s got the fans to prove it, too, and by still giving those fans enduring melodies to hold as a horizon throughout his musical maelstroms, Sufjan Stevens remains able to (just) maintain enough balance with them as he pushes defiantly onward.
Reader Comments (2)
I am a Sufjan fan and have been for many years... though this album... I do not get. I was trying to deduce if it was the mood I was in when firstly listening yet, quickly realized upon second and third listen that sometimes yes, experimental and "pushing the limits" there is an undeniable presence of cacophony.. I am not one of his fans who JUST love his mainstream sounding hits and I relish his attempts. This though is a miss for me. Unless, I decide to drop acid and zone out to the layering (that anyone with any strain of oddity in their blood, a Mac computer and a sound library could produce) I don’t think this will be on my top ten. No doubt: respect to Sufjan for this and other works- but not my cup. Sad to say I expected better.
Shows how subjective music is... my significant other has been into Sufjan for years but I never really dug it. Mad respect to his songwriting skills but it just wasn't my thing, a bit too cute-sy, I felt like jumping out of my 2nd floor window when I heard some of them tunes.
This album though... this one hooked me from the beginning. This record oozes creativity, emotion and most of all, soul.
Consider me a convert.