From my favorite record of the year. Sufjan really challenged himself and his listeners—setting aside, as he did, his banjo for electronics and twee prettiness for sometimes abrasive, ugly noise. Christianity Today’s review rightly concluded that fans of his older music put off by this record “will discover a more complex understanding of Stevens, who as it turns out, is neither a "Christian artist” nor an “artist who is a Christian,” but a human like the rest of us.“
Sufjan the human, however he may have left his old sound behind, still possesses unfathomable melodic gifts and a truly symphonic sense of composition. "Age of Adz” is a wild and uncontrollable and stupendous wall of sound and emotion, a song made up of bits of noise, stray sounds, and instrumental flourishes corralled into something beautiful and personal and giant. I discern in this something not unlike the creativity of God, whose Spirit hovers over chaotic creation and refashions it into something beautiful and new through the ministry of the Word.
Back to the record—while I do love Age of Adz on its own merits, chief among its virtues is how it recalls for me his Adz-heavy concert at the Paramount Theater in Seattle, which was so good I simply fumble for the words. And I love that this record, which I can spin anytime I want, serves mainly to testify about that unrepeatable, live event.