#4: SUFJAN STEVENS - 'The Age of Adz'

If you look up Sufjan Stevens on Wikipedia, you see a picture of an otherwise pretty plain-looking dude with a pair of massive, colored wings on his back. That's how strange he is. It's a bit more than a year ago, that I first heard Stevens' masterpiece, the Illinois-album of 2005, on our campervan stereo heading for the great, red unknown. If you had told me back then, that Stevens would release a new album in late 2010, which would jump in at #4 on my end-of-year list, I would have giggled.


Okay, Stevens has moved massively in my direction on The Age of Adz. First of all, he's experimenting heavily with electronic sounds and blips, and secondly his lyrics are now about his own emotions, rather than historic fables from the Mid-North. But still, this album is an instant winner. Heck, I played a few of the tunes for my dad the other day, and he dug it instantly - that's pretty awesome!


The difference between madness and brilliance is often pretty slim, and Stevens is perfect proof, although one should not be in any doubt that he crystal clearly leans towards the latter. The arrangements on The Age of Adz are often so eargasmic, so textured and masterfully produced that any muso would wet him/herself. I love how some of the tunes, such as 'Age of Adz' itself, start out in one direction, and end in an entirely other direction. Or how about the incomparable, 25-minute closer 'Impossible Soul', which on the surface may consist of several different movements, but, if you dig a bit deeper, is really an extraordinarily schizoid, masterful whole, iced by a a massively inspiring choir of enthusiastic voices.


But what really sends The Age of Adz skywards is Stevens' ability to suddenly become very intimate. As I mentioned before, I'm really a sucker for artists that are able to beautifully describe their emotions and innermost feelings (For Emma, Forever Ago didn't become my benchmark album for nothing), and on tunes like 'I Walked' and the excellent 'Vesuvius', Stevens really gets down to the nitty-gritty. Of course there are lesser tracks around the middle of the album, but when Stevens hits home, he does so with incredible wit, and his remarkable ability to turn almost strikingly kitsch sounds into magnificent and wickedly intricate soundscapes makes The Age of Adz an enthralling experience!


By the way, I've been a bit busier this week than I expected (but in a pretty awesome way, really), and I also managed to be a shmuck and forget the power cord for my computer at my parents', so I'm a bit behind schedule on my countdown, meaning that you're gonna have to wait it out a bit for the top 3 on the list - it's gonna be out between chrissy and new years!