An Open Letter to Sufjan Stevens, On the Release of His New Album

Dear Mr. Stevens,

Hey there. It’s been awhile. I’ve missed you, and honestly, I’ve been a little concerned. Remember that Paste Magazine interview you did a year ago? You said “I no longer really have faith in the album anymore. I no longer have faith in the song.” I was dumbfounded. Illinois was the pinnacle of the album as an art form, with its thematic arcs, brilliant sequencing, gorgeous arrangements and literate lyrics. If you didn’t believe in the album anymore, how could I have any hope? With such a grasp of the craft, how could you deny the importance of both the album and the song? Around that time you got all caught up in The BQE, which I have to admit was pretty impressive. Apparently, you started hanging out with the National. And then, all of the sudden, you had a new album.

This news was exciting, but I was a little nervous. It was like running into an old friend back in your hometown — what if you’re not the same as I remember? What if Brooklyn turned you into a callous hipster? Luckily, I couldn’t have been more wrong. The opening track, “Futile Devices,” is a contender for my favorite song of the entire year. Know why? It sounds like the old you, almost like it could be an outtake from Seven Swans. It makes a good opener, since the rest of the album certainly doesn’t go down quite as smooth.

There’s a sense of compromise like this throughout as you combine new sounds with old. Tension pops up everywhere, but gets resolved. Dissonance creeps in and out of consonance. These are songs about life and death, love and loss, but sonically it’s about you moving forward and taking us along for the ride. The title track, “The Age Of Adz,” did this brilliantly, with huge bombastic brass lines and flute flourishes that eventually drop down to spare acoustic guitar and vocals before building back up.  Maybe you still don’t believe in the album, but the sequencing here works perfectly as you move into “Now That I’m Older.” The melody of the chorus and piano seems to hint at the melody of “Adz,” but then does its own thing with a weird chorus of many Sufjans. You found a good formula here, I think, with all of these songs.

There’s a lot that’s new, with the electronic sounds and the weird dissonances, but every so often I’d hear a flute trill or a certain way of phrasing a verse that was quintessentially “you,” or at least the you I was used to up until now. The closing track, however, is a little different. It seems huge and important, as if all the other songs were just a way of getting us there. At twenty-five minutes long, it’s pretty daunting, yet after listening I understand why. It’s your mission statement, basically — this is where your music is going, free from the constraints of traditional song length and album composition. You try your best T-Pain impression with the auto-tune, there are danceable moments and shout choruses and disco strings, but there are also quiet moments. About halfway through, there’s a chorus that goes “We can do much more together / It’s not so impossible.”

If that’s a challenge, I accept.  •

Still yours,

Caroline Mills