2023-10-22 15:31:48
(Presumably) under the impressions of the (approaching) death of his friend Evans Richardson (and before his own serious illness, which preceded the release of his tenth solo album), Sufjan Stevens recorded music with Javelin that feels like the classic essence of his singer-songwriter- beauty feels.
Eight years following Carrie & Lowell (and two following A Beginner’s Mind) Javelin was born into a kind of homogenized duality, which is an absolutely intimate and minimalist home recording charisma along Steven’s delicate, breathy voice and an ostensible folk restraint opulently embellished with a subtle hand, in beautiful female backing harmonies (by Adrienne Maree Brown, Hannah Cohen, Pauline Delassus, Megan Lui and Nedelle Torrisi) dresses, or once more and once more through electronic ones Age of Adz-Shades dabbed (as in the bittersweet opener that bursts forth on the piano as a soft symbiosis of colorful pop, ambient melancholy and machine ambitions Goodbye Evergreenwhose epilogue “You know I love you“ as a mantra following the programmed crescendo is pure salvation, or in the beat of which ultimately goes nowhere, gently floating in a trance Genuflecting Ghost).
In terms of content, dark self-doubt and sometimes clear, sometimes God-fearing, sometimes mythically abstract reflections on the ends of relationships meet the simple catharsis of heartwarming and eternal vows of love: bittersweet balm, in the face of the pain of a separation.
In this aesthetic of sad, sentimental, but largely non-cheesy beautiful sound, which is as fragile as it is immovably self-contained A Running Start vulnerable and shy in naive innocence of curiously playful arrangements or blossoming subtly jubilant or rippling Everything That Rises contemplative like the decelerated minimalism version of Neverending Story with a barely perceptible soul flair.
But in the homogeneous overall, Stevens succeeds in producing some of the most touching songs of his career (although not completely disturbingly poignant in their soft intensity – or as overwhelming from a melodic point of view as the highlights of, for example, Illinoise).
Above all Will Anybody Ever Love Me? as an absolutely essential, defining and shy distillation of the magic that Stevens can work as a songwriter. Plus the captivating double of the wonderfully ethereal floating through a winter night My Red Little Fox as well as the one who takes on the fairytale atmosphere like a dream So You Are Tired. A bit magical!
In over eight minutes Shit Talk is The National-Man Bryce Dessner invited to communicate with elegiac strings, while an orchestral splendor emerges with subversive restraint and searches for the small truths in the big picture. Afterwards, Stevens finds solace beyond the horizon in the spirituality of Neil Young, whose There’s a World he explains in a conciliatory manner – and Javelinone of his most unspectacularly outstanding albums, a cautiously hopeful farewell.
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