Kitty Empire 

Sufjan Stevens: The Age Of Adz – review

Sufjan Steven's first album proper for five years is something of a departure, says Kitty Empire
  
  


Since 2005's Illinoise, Sufjan Stevens has become more composer/arranger than singer-songwriter, guesting on albums and hymning the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. His latest LP was inspired not by a US road, but by paranoiac spiritualist and outsider artist Royal Robertson; it finds Stevens back on track with lengthy, glitchy, almost R&B-derived work designed to confound memories of Stevens the orchestral-folk pin-up. The aptly-named "Too Much" finds string arpeggios vying with wild electronics while Sufjan auditions for TV On the Radio. Repeated listens expose the juicy stuff: volcanoes ("Vesuvius"), crocheting ("Futile Devices") and running through the night with a knife stuck in one's chest ("I Walked").

 

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