This is The Age of Adz

So here it is. Album of the year for 2010, Sufjan Stevens’ The Age of Adz. I know what you’re going to say: What the hell’s going on? Where did this pick come from? I’m scared! Well, this one surprised me too. I’ve been a very peripheral fan of Sufjan for several years. I found his music pleasant enough and had a handful of songs I liked a lot. I invested in his Christmas song box set a few years ago and play it often this time of year. I certainly never considered him a musical savant as the critics all seemed to. When I heard he had a new album coming out I gave it only passing consideration, but did take time to read a few reviews. The information I gleaned only seemed to lessen my interest. It was mostly described as a grandiose departure from his folky, banjo-flavored chamber pop in favor of a new electronically infused “future-Sufjan.” Coming off the aforementioned weariness of blips and bloops of some of this year’s other releases, I wasn’t thrilled. Still, due to the relative dearth of other notable album releases that week (save for Belle and Sebastian Write About Love in case I wanted to scratch that chamber pop itch) and my hankering to sink my ears into something new, I decided to give it a chance.

The Age of Adz had a feeling of immediacy from the first listen. It is most definitely a departure from the Sufjan of old, an album heavily produced and synthesized. It was an ambitious and risky turn that could have easily been a failure. Where Bright Eyes tried something similar a few years ago on the unimpressive Digital Ash in a Digital Urn, Sufjan’s album finds the magic formula and succeeds. Admittedly, as someone who wasn’t previously a die-hard Sufjan fan I may have a skewed view. It may be that he did end up alienating his fan base and this will ultimately be the beginning of his fall from indie-rock grace. I doubt it, though, and at the very least, he’s earned one new disciple.

The Age of Adz is an emotional powerhouse that runs the gamut from quiet contemplation to over the top, everything-but-the-kitchen-sink spectacle. It bothers me to even try to translate my thoughts about it into words because I know I’ll never come close. The best comparison I can offer is that this album is the aural equivalent of a Charlie Kaufman movie. It moves me in the same way Synechdoche, New York or Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind does. So, knowing my description will be feeble, I’ll attempt to break down the album track by track:

He starts out with the most Sufjan-sounding track of the album, the hushed Futile Devices, which establishes a feeling of warmth and comfort and intimacy and familiar love, but also suggests an underlying thread of distance and longing, probably regret. He describes feelings being difficult to put into words, a theme that resonates with me even as I write this review. It’s the shortest track on the album but sets the tone perfectly. Next comes Too Much, the official introduction to the new production style. A gurgling molten lava effect cools to exacting and simmering percussion. Some of the effects he lays out here and throughout the album are reminiscent of the “intelligent techno” sounds we’ve heard before (for example Kid A) and they work well. Reflection on lost love continues here but has a decidedly more regretful tone. It’s clear that not every moment was sunshine and roses. There were obviously conflicts and things said that, painfully, cannot be taken back. The track ends with a flurry of horns and strings and chorus repetition and resolves into those Kid A sounds and fades to black before launching into the title track, the highlight of the album. Age of Adz bursts out of the gate with brilliant horns, trilling woodwinds and pulsing percussion and makes me feel like I’m attending the Hollywood premiere of a movie about Sufjan’s life. Or my life… Or maybe just life. It’s resplendent and glamorous and exciting. He begins “Well I have known you for just a little while. But I feel I've known you, I feel I've seen you when the Earth was split in fives,” suggesting this love he’s describing felt as old as eternity even from its inception. He continues in the chorus, “When it dies, when it dies, it rots. And when it lives, when it lives, it gives it all it gots” underscoring the passion and fire in this love when it flourished and the charred decay of its darkest depths. This tumultuous ride also describes the song itself as it soars and dips along for eight minutes before resolving into a tender apology for what could have been. I Walked continues in that same vain of guilt and despair which serves as a nice bridge between the high energy Age of Adz and the haunting, lilting beauty of Now That I’m Older, where a wisened and matured Sufjan reflects on and tries to come to terms with his past missteps.

Get Real Get Right sees him turning to God to get back on track and the dreamlike Bad Communication sees him futilely pleading to put the pieces back together. The next track, Vesuvius, is another standout. I’m not sure exactly how it relates to the love lost theme, but it’s absolutely beautiful and does have Sufjan singing in third person, urging him to follow his own heart. The narrative continues on the swells and hushes of the emotional All For Myself and the frenetic tempo of I Want To Be Well, where the tone becomes decidedly more serious as Sufjan pronounces, “I’m not fucking around” and sings about suffering and illness, life and death. The album concludes with the marathon track, Impossible Soul, which clocks in at over 25 minutes. There are two main reasons I shouldn’t like this song: 1) it’s 25 minutes long, 2) he incorporates the use of auto-tune technology, that annoying-ass vocal effect popularized by T-Pain. Remarkably, this is probably my second favorite track on the album. It’s really a seamless denouement in five parts. For me, it’s the perfect end to a near-perfect album, but could easily have functioned as a stand-alone EP if not for the amazing 10 tracks that precede it and set it up so well. It once again explores the depths of emotion using what NME described as “a melting-pot of every musical genre prevalent in the last decade.” And that auto-tune, that damned auto-tune. Who’d have thought it actually worked. I really can’t imagine the song without it now. The album winds down with repetition of the optimistic words “boy, we can do much more together” before making a slight variation, concluding and fading out with “boy, we made such a mess together.” I love these lines because they evoke for me that Eternal Sunshine mentality; this love was meant to be despite the fact that it’s hopelessly flawed. It’s beautiful, it’s fractured and it’s worth every minute.

I wrote all of the above several weeks ago, and as I go back and listen to it again and again, the metaphysical properties of this album keep unfolding. Rather than a journal the singer has written to the former lover, I’ve now come to feel that the album is an internal dialogue through which the singer is trying to learn to love himself and understand his place in the world. The album was apparently inspired by an artist named Royal Robertson. I haven’t read anything about him and I have no idea what Sufjan’s intention was with any of this, but this album obviously touched me deeply. I doubt anyone who reads this will feel quite the same way about this album as me and I’m not even sure I’ll feel the same way about it a year from now. For me, though, albums like this don’t come along very often. I can probably only come up with about half a dozen ever. I put it as number one because it surprised me and it moved me and it reminded me of the power of music and why I love it so much.

There you have it, my long-winded review of the music of 2010. It was a great year and this one has the potential to be even better. My most anticipated new albums of 2011 will be coming soon, but not before some differing opinions from PD and JP.