By Rose Graner
Entertainment Editor
Sufjan Stevens’ latest LP, “The Age of Adz,” is a surprising tonal departure from the sounds of his earlier work. Nonetheless, the album as a whole retains the same dreamy, melodic feel that Stevens’ past works held.
A Detroit native, Stevens is a notoriously prolific artist; he has released at least one album each year since 2000 and most of his albums contain over 20 tracks. Although his work has become more musically sophisticated over the years, Stevens’ actual sound had changed very little in the nine years since his debut.
On “The Age of Adz,” however, Stevens introduces new digitized instrumentals and a previously unheard atmospheric quality to his music.
Most of Stevens’ albums have been highly conceptualized, if not necessarily high-concept. Two of his albums, “Michigan” and “Illinois,” were thematically centered on their respective namesake states. He also composed a five-volume epic of original Christmas songs and the soundtrack to a film he created entitled “The BQE” about the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway.
“The Age of Adz,” admittedly, is not concept-free. It follows dystopian themes of the world’s end similar to those of the August 2010 release, “The All Delighted People EP,” but plays with them much less literally. Where “The All Delighted People EP” made a point of actually mentioning the apocalypse, “The Age of Adz” only alludes to it in passing.
It is worth noting that “The All Delighted People EP” could be considered a test-run or a tentative step toward the content on “The Age of Adz.”
Although “The All Delighted People EP” was the first Stevens release that established a heavy use of digital instrumentation—computerized beats, for instance-“The Age of Adz” explores those instrumentals and production techniques more fully.
The album isn’t necessarily more sugary or pop-oriented than any of Stevens’ past works, but its digitized quality certainly does give off a more playful, almost dance-pop vibe. The computerized beat, quick tempo and simple-but-catchy melody of “Too Much” make it as close to an indie version of an Owl City track as anything possibly could be.
This isn’t to say Stevens is trying to use “The Age of Adz” to break into the mainstream. He recently stated in an interview that he “no longer has faith in the album” as a format for producing music, for one thing. In classic Stevens form, the track “Impossible Soul” runs 25 minutes long and features moments of complete static breakdown and shifts melodies constantly.
In fact, Stevens even manages to continue his tradition of writing haunting and epic odes to inanimate objects on “The Age of Adz” with “Vesuvius,” a computerized-yet-folky celebration of the Italian volcano.
Most established artists who attempt to integrate computerized tones into their sound come to regard doing so as a mistake. In assuming that computerized noise requires a whole new approach to melody and musicianship, they tend to make mistakes and create stilted, painfully technical works. Stevens has undoubtedly taken a new digital direction on “The Age of Adz,” but he has managed to maintain his artistry and originality while doing so.
“The Age of Adz” is available on iTunes and atathsmatickitty.com for purchase.
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