The Predatory Wasp
Sufjan Stevens has made a lot of Christmas music; the problem is (whisper it), some of it isn’t actually all that great. So here’s my carefully selected, um, selection of the best there is from both his Christmas albums alongside some other festive period-appropriate selections: wall to wall ‘bangers’ that you can cook, dance, sing and make merry to. Happy Sufmas!
It’s hard to explain just how of an emotional connection I have to Sufjan Steven’s 2024 album Seven Swans. Reissued today for its 20th anniversary, it was the first album I listened to, and I vividly remember the experience. It was like nothing I’d heard before, and started an intense and continuing obsession. Sister is probably the album’s emotional peak, with closer The Transfiguration coming in a close second. But the entire album is flawless. I have still never heard anything that approaches its raw emotion and stripped down beauty. I love you, Sufjan.
In a first (and probably last) for the blog, I’m posting this without listening to it. I’m so very hyped for the release on Javelin on Friday that I don’t want any further spoilers ahead of enjoying it in its entirety. But as a Sufjan obsessive, I couldn’t let today’s release go past unblogged. I expect it’s great: either way, I don’t want to know.
The new single from his forthcoming LP Javelin which lands next month, on which Stevens plays every instrument with additional vocals from adrienne maree brown, Hannah Cohen, and Megan Lui. I haven’t been this excited about an album for quite some time.
Our lord and saviour Sufjan is back with – IMO – one of his finest songs for years, So You Are Tired; the lead single from his new album Javelin, due out in October. It’s absolutely vintage Suffers, with an outro beautiful enough to rival anything he’s ever recorded. I have enormous hopes for this album, which is described as “his first in full singer-songwriter mode since Carrie & Lowell.” Fuck. Yes. I love everything about this, with the exception of the deeply hideous title font on the artwork. But I forgive him.
Sufjan! Sufers! The Big Suf! Yesterday our founding father announced a new album, Reflections, a studio recording of his score for Justin Beck’s ballet, performed by pianists Timo Andres and Conor Hanick. To be honest, I don’t really like this very much – all a bit ‘jazzy’ for my tastes – but if Sufjan releases, this blog must report. Hopefully they’ll be some sad bits on the full album than I can cherrypick.
Sufjan Stevens and Angelo De Augustine. Credit: Daniel Anum Jasper
I’m pretty convinced at this stage that Sufjan barely sleeps. Following two albums in 2020 and Convocations from earlier this year, announced today was A Beginner’s Mind, a collaborative album alongside Angelo De Augustine and written during a month-long sabbatical in upstate New York staying in a friend’s cabin. A 14 track album “(loosely) based on (mostly) popular films”, single Olympus explores the mythical deities and monsters created by Ray Harryhausen for films such as Jason and the Argonauts and Clash of the Titans, and is an evocative, folky delight.
It’s fairly outrageous that despite stealing the name for this blog from one of his songs, I’ve barely acknowledged than Sufjan has put out four (four!) albums in the last month or so. Arguably it’s one album, split into four parts, but still. My various excuses: I’ve been busy! There’s been a lot of good music to cover! Pubs have been open! Etc. Anyway, this is me officially saying: these albums exist and are all out now and are definitely worth your time. Also, they’re all on YouTube in their entirety.
Like many of Sufjan’s albums, they’re self-indulgent and meandering. Also like every single one of his albums, there are moments of such sublime, heart-rending beauty that you can’t imagine listening to anyone else ever again. Revelation V is one of those moments, but there are many, many more.
Less than six months after the release of The Ascension – about which I still have mixed feeling to say the least – Sufjan has just announced a new instrumental album, Convocations. Comprised of five volumes – Meditations, Lamentations, Revelations, Celebrations and Incantations – the project is “a two-and-a-half-hour, 49-track reflection on a year of anxiety, uncertainty, isolation, and loss”, and while I’ve probably done enough reflecting over the last year or so, it’s Sufjan, so this is obviously excellent news, as even if it’s likely – on recent form – to be an uneven two-and-a-half-hours, you’re pretty much guaranteed at least a few moments of indescribable beauty. Out 06 May digitally, and 20 August via 5xLP colored vinyl boxset .
The latest in an ever-increasing and very welcome tide of singles from his upcoming album The Ascension, this is vintage Sufjan from the very first bar. Haunting pads and those brittle electronic drums that he’s been playing around with ever since the early A Sun Came-era weirdness, now honed and refined. Music video is great too. Maybe 2020 will turn out to be ok after all.
The Predatory Wasp 