"The Age of Adz" by Sufjan Stevens

This album's a weird one.

You've been warned.

Sufjan Stevens took this album, entitled "The Age of Adz," and ran in a completely different direction than his previous releases. He ran on down to Florida, boarded a spaceship, and went off to a planet of sound that was in a completely different galaxy than the one he had occupied previously.

I loved that previous planet, but, if it's possible, I might grow to love this one more. This album is a rough listen, you can't really do anything else while you're listening to it because, quite frankly, this CD takes a whole lot of energy and concentration to listen to. The first track, "Futile Devices," is the closest to the sound of Stevens' old work. The similarities stop there. From that point on, the songs are choppy, riddled with electronic sounds, swirling woodwind sounds, and, at some points, just obnoxious noises.

However, as with all of Sufjan Stevens' work, there is a melodic element hiding in this music, resting way under all the landmines on the surface. I would even call the album beautiful, in it's own sort of Pablo Picasso, cut and paste kinda way.

Aside from the music, the lyrics of this album are extremely interesting. They take you back to the past, into "the age of adz," which I could only assume is a wild world in the subregions of Sufjan's imagination. Still, it makes every track extremely interesting to listen to.

Chances are, you won't be a huge fan of this album after the first listen. It took me two listens to love the different-ness of it (yes, I just made up a word, thank you for noticing), and it's still growing on me several listens later. I wish I had listened to it more earlier than I did, because this album would have been in the middle of my Top 10 Albums of the Year post.

So, all I can say for this album is, give it a shot. If you're new to Sufjan Stevens, well, there ya go. You got a brand new Sufjan right off the bat. If you loved his previous stuff as I did, give this album a chance. There's a reason we loved him from the get-go, and those reasons are still in this album, just disguised under a different style.

My three favorite tracks are "Too Soon," "Age of Adz," and "Vesuvius."

Here's a link to his Myspace.

http://www.myspace.com/sufjanstevens

I hope you enjoy and, until next time, enjoy all the new music out there!

Andrew