One part folk hero, one part indie experimentalist, Sufjan Stevens’ discography if full of monumental classics — Greetings from Michigan, Seven Swans, Illinois, The Age of Adz, and Carrie & Lowell — all of which have become staples of “sad indie” playlists for tuned-in music fans (and, apparently, Spotify). But, as he proves with his 10th solo album Javelin, Stevens’ work has far more depth and nuance than the three-letter S-word implies, as hidden within the devastation of the new batch of songs is a surprising willingness to grow.
From the initial announcement of Javelin, fans and critics framed the album as a sort of bridge between Stevens’ two aforementioned sonic interests: the haunted, plainly beautiful folk of albums like 2015’s landmark Carrie & Lowell and the ornate, left-field, electronic-infused indie-pop of The Age of Adz or The Ascension. While these two sides of Stevens were never as diametrically opposed as the narrative suggests, Javelin is indeed a wondrous meeting of the human and the synthetic, of stripped-down immediacy and lush, impressionistic extravagance.
Such dichotomy is evident right from the album’s opening with “Goodbye Evergreen,” a softly sung ballad that fractures into a maximalist explosion of industrial sounds, shimmering production, and human voices. It’s a moving payoff akin to Perfume Genius’ “Otherside,” complete with grand dynamic shifts and pained, understated vocals that establish the album’s conflict between love and the reality that said love can’t hold. “Goodbye, Evergreen,” he sings, ” You know I love you/ But everything heaven-sent/ Must burn out in the end”. Its mournful — goodbyes often are — but far from a hopeless act of surrender, as Stevens frames the narrator as the one taking action, even as it breaks his heart.
Later tracks find similar success mining this formula, starting off with little more than Stevens’ near-whispered singing and acoustic guitar before introducing layer upon layer of orchestration. “Will Anybody Ever Love Me?,” initially simple and sparse, ends with a climactic refrain backed by a choir and sequenced drums, and the mystical forest of baroque folk established in the first half of “Genuflecting Ghost” is eventually snowed over by Paul Lansky-esque synth pads.
Javelin’s cuts that land a little more concretely on the “singer-songwriter” end of the spectrum offer some of the most emotionally affecting moments of the album. The single “So You Are Tired” is among Stevens’ most poignant musings on a love gone sour and features some of the most dejected lyrics found on the record: “So you are seething with laughter/ Was it really all just a joke?/ I was a man indivisible/ When everything else was broke.”
Though the subject matter of the new set borders the songwriter’s usual thematic interests — love, loneliness, spirituality, etc. — his writing remains remarkably authentic and powerful, and it’s a joy to hear him lean on his strengths while avoiding any sense of staleness. Especially for fans who’ve kept up with the developments in the artist’s personal life, the songs of Javelin are likely to hit particularly hard.
