Album: The Age of Adz
Year: 2010
. . .
And so the official follow-up to Illinois, The Age of Adz, finally came out in October of 2010, a year that had already seen a slew of ambitious albums, from Kanye West’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy and The Arcade Fire’s The Suburbs to Janelle Monae’s The ArchAndroid.
And The Age of Adz was such a ambitious and radical reinvention of what people expected from Sufjan Stevens, I wrote this at the time.
The 5 stages of a 2010 Sufjan Stevens Song:
- “What the fuck?”
- “No, seriously. What? The. Fuck!?!”
- “Who does this guy think he is?”
- “Oh wait, I get it. That’s kinda catchy.”
- “Hey, can you play that again?”
And while this was probably inspired by songs like yesterday’s crazed guitar jam “Djohariah” or the 25:35 closer of The Age of Adz, “Impossible Soul,” what probably got me to stage 4 on many of these songs was my teenage love of multi-part songs like “Thick as a Brick,” “Close to the Edge,” “2112” or “Shine on You Crazy Diamond.” You know, prog.
Hilariously enough, The Age of Adz starts off with a feint, as the opening track, “Futile Devices,” is classic folky Sufjan, but the opening of the very next song, “Too Much” is the first hint of the new direction. While there are the expected horns and strings and choirs, “Too Much” is utterly drenched in weird, burbling synths and clattering drum machines even as Sufjan opens the song singing about a love object he’s not quite attracting.
If I was a different man
If I had blood in my eyes
I could have read of your heart
I could have read of your mind
But now I’m lonely instead, I put up a fight
So pick up your battering ram, love
I want to see it
If this all seems a bit off-putting, the melody of the chorus shines through all of the clamor, as a host of Sufjans declares.
There’s too much riding on that
There’s too much, too much, too much love
There’s too much riding on that
There’s too much, too much, too much love
There’s too much riding on that
There’s too much, too much, too much love
There’s too much riding on that
Anyway
And so it goes: synths and horns and choirs and drum machines get louder and get quieter and get louder while for much of the back half of the song the chant of “there’s too much riding on that” is the only constant. Too much indeed, and yet you always get back to “hey, play the for me again,” because you know instinctively that there’s going to be something new — and yeah, weird as fuck — around the next bend.
That said, The Age of Adz turned out to be Sufjan’s highest-charting album, simultaneously topping Billboard’s Folk, Alternative, Indie and Rock charts and making to to #7 on the Albums chart. It also made a bunch of top album lists for 2010, including mine. In the time since, he’s alternated collaborations, instrumental albums, and the like with a pair of fine studio albums: 2015’s Carrie & Lowell (about the death of his parents) and 2020’s The Ascension (about everything). And while I’m not writing about them, I do really like the “we’re all gonna die” build at the end of the live version of of “Fourth of July” — from 2017’s Carrie & Lowell Live — and “Video Game” from The Ascension sounds like the closest thing to a hit single he’ll ever write. A hit single in 1989.
“Too Much”
“Too Much” Live on Jimmy Fallon, 2010
“Too Much” Live in San Francisco, 2016
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