Sufjan Stevens - Age of Adz - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Since the 2003 of his third album MICHIGAN and 2004s SEVEN SWANS, Sufjan Stevens has been recognized as on of the most talented songwriter-performers in independent music. ILLINOIS, the follow-up to MICHIGAN in his Inch50 StatesInch project, again demonstrates his ability to realize a music vision through his moving songs, musicianship (he plays 25 instrums on the album), production and arrangments. While some musical and literary influences are felt and heard, Stevens' total involvement in every phase of the project results in a thoroughly unique result. On his second meditation on an American state, a 22-track anthematic tone poem for Illinois, Stevens weaves variegated musical styles and instrumental textures into a tapestry of person famous, infamous and anonymous, and places iconic, obscure and abandoned. Love, loss, faith, the unique character of place, encounters with spiritual stength in unexpected places, incomprehensible horror and celebratory odes to the rise and fall of human works are among the themes Stevens visits in his ode to the Prairie State.

Composed as a geographical tone poem, MICHIGAN follows a metaphysical expedition through the idiosyncrasies of middle America.

U.S. double vinyl LP pressing. 2010 from the critically acclaimed singer/songwriter. The Age of Adz (pronounced Odds) is Sufjan Stevens' first full-length collection of original songs since 2005's conceptual pop opus Illinois. While the sounds on this record are distinctly InchartificialInch (drums machines and analog synths reign supreme), the proclamations of the songs are unabashedly visceral, sung loudly, with a backdrop of insistent orchestration. The result is an album that is perhaps more vibrant, primary and explicit than anything Sufjan has done before, incorporating themes that are neither historical nor civic, but rather personal and primal (if even a little juvenile).