Raw emotion from Sufjan Stevens on his new studio album.
You suspect hubris is not an accusation levelled at Sufjan Stevens very much, so let’s do some of the heavy lifting here for him.
In a career that’s often been punctuated by left turns, idiosyncrasy and background speculation about his religious beliefs amongst many other things, he’s produced two albums – 2005’s Illinois and, a decade on from that, Carrie And Lowell – on which he’s genuinely reset what it means to be a contemporary American singer-songwriter, practicing transcendence from its sometimes constricting envelope.
This, in combination with the aforementioned digressions (the last release with which he was associated, Reflections, was an adapted ballet score he’d composed in 2019), leads to feelings of curiosity and anticipation whenever a new project is announced. Javelin is no exception.
To add the sort of context not always immediately apparent to his work, Sufjan Stevens has publicly dedicated Javelin to the memory of his former partner Evans Richardson, who died in April of this year.
Whilst Carrie And Lowell was in part a biographical exploration of the singer’s relationship with his mother, separating the relevant parts of his personality has never been straightforward.
Here however, early in the piece we find Will Anybody Ever Love Me?, a reflection on the deeper waters of self-esteem, desire and uncertainty on which he plays a lute-like instrument called a guitalin that in form sounds particularly like a banjo. Squared by strings and close backing harmonies, the kick-drum and gentle synths which eventually play in are all congruent pieces of an unpredictable whole.
These doors into Stevens’ inner sanctum have rarely swung this far open. Opener Goodbye Evergreen begins with the almost whispered, ‘Goodbye Evergreen/You Know I Love You/But everything heaven-sent/Must burn out in the end’, before then veering away from the grief as though it’s too much to process, eventually burying it in a strange, Baroque ending. Mid-way through the song tones clash like they’re at war. It’s the strangest wake-song you’ll hear for a long time.
Those looking for further emotional signposts may head towards Genuflecting Ghost although the warm, pastoral atmospherics only hint at either a recalibration of post-trauma faith or a spiritual connection latterly made.
If that’s cryptic, the choice and treatment of the cover version which closes is utterly inspired. Taken from Neil Young’s 1972 classic Harvest, There’s A World in its original form was described as overblown by the Canadian himself and ‘like a chocolate-covered cheeseburger’ by Rolling Stone. Here its delicate, Willo-the-wisp rendition makes for a genuinely enchanting finish.
If that feels slightly purged of the dramatic personal overtone elsewhere, the album’s other best moments come from tilt being reversed. On the choral My Red Little Fox references to the Pentecost and a desire for an unidentified party to, ‘Kiss me with the fire of the gods’, are if not fire and brimstone then straddling the line between divine and real-world ecstasy.
But the most directly titled, but least directly travelling song, Shit Talk, concerns the doomy end scape of an unsalvageable affair, but the cracked, occasionally desperately put refrain is, ‘I will always love you’. Co-made with The National’s Aaron Dessner, at nearly eight minutes the idea of imperfect everything – love, happiness, crying, touch – is given the space to breathe, the results utterly spellbinding.
This is Javelin’s gift, Sufjan Stevens on it offering an articulation of things which have only ever crystalized in private, but of which it’s impossible not to give empathy.
It might one day be hailed as a classic to sit alongside his rest, but for now the most important thing is that it simply is.
