Written by Amber Roe
Though we arrived over an hour early, a daunting line of admirers graced the hoary wall.The interlopers waited and watched as the doors to the cosmic kingdom opened. We were bid to enter for the show we’d all been waiting for since the close of summer, for the musician we’d been waiting to hear from since his stories ofMichiganandIllinois, the one most of us never thought we’d get to see- Sufjan Stevens.The fact of the matter is, I’d realized something moments before entering the gate: Sufjan had just put out a brand new album only days before, and I had not heard a lick of it. With this realization came another: Musicians, more often than not, play, first and foremost, their new projects and then, perhaps, are so kind as to grace the audience with a song or two for the sake of plucking nostalgic heart-strings. This revelation caused a tumult of fear to enter my mind.
After seven years of subtle harmonic devotion and admiration, seven years of mental and musical growth, seven years of story-times with the same author and seven hours on the road for to hear it all in it’s truest form yet, what if this album…is awful?
He started the set with “Seven Swans,” a song from an older album (a song in keeping with his newest, post-apocalyptic and prophetically lyrical LP). We all knew the words. We knew what we thought it all meant. But we were wrong.
Later I decided that maybe he meant to shepherd us in with Seven Swans, so we would see what he could see. That’s what it all seemed to be about in the end. He wanted to tell us his story. So he did.
While most previous albums were folk narrative, exuding historical perspective and kaleidoscopic culture theories, the “Age of Adz”(as Sufjan himself took time to tell his listeners) is an experimental experiential process of the coming together of primordial sounds, a story of the loss of words and the grief that took hold when he realized this loss and a sudden innate understanding of that truth that we all come to at the pinnacle of this dissension: Sometimes, all there is left to be done, is surrender and dance.
The use of the electric sounds entwined with woodwinds, strings and language all fused for the creation of candor, allowed for this metaphor of movement to take place.
I can’t tell you that I would have enjoyed this new and innovative album quite as much without having first seen and experienced it in person. I can’t guarantee that, had I been sitting with the same anxious crowd in the balcony above instead of standing in the heart of it all, I could have felt what I felt, learned what I learned about this man, all so simultaneously.
What I can say is that this album is a creation, a work of art, whose function and meaning is irrefutably relatable to at least a few hundred people who once had broken hearts. I can say, without a hint of doubt, that Sufjan Stevens has become a voluntary brother to all those here and there who are just willing to have a listen, and love.
