Albums of 2010: 10-6

The Top 10 begins here...


10. These New Puritans - Hidden

When chief song-writer Jack Barnett revealed his agenda in early press interviews - bassoons, choirs of children, "dancehall-meets-Steve Reich"- few took him seriously. Fewer still could have believed  he would pull it off quite as well as this. Putting its best foot forward with the wildly ambitious lead single We Want War, Hidden signalled a collosal step up for These New Puritans. Its wilful post-punk experimentation recalled seminal bands like This Heat, but its skull-crushing beats (Fire-Power was a better M.I.A. song than M.I.A. herself managed in 2010) ensured Hidden was its own beast entirely, and one right in the here-and-now. Southend-on-Sea had never sounded so exotic.

9. Liars - Sisterworld

Whilst Sisterworld, like its eponymous predecessor, is one of the more accessible entries in the Liars canon, it was still a deeply unsettling listening experience that hearkened back to their experimental second and third records. Whilst their previous record was a disparate and uneven affair, Liars' return to their home city of LA provided Sisterworld with a more resounding theme, in sound at least, and made for perhaps their most satisfying record yet. A sense of death and dread lurks throughout, awaiting the moment that the gratuitous Scarecrows On A Killer Slant jumps from the shadows and shoots you point-blank in the face.

8. Swans - My Father Will Guide Me Up A Rope To The Sky

14 years on from their previous record, My Father... saw Michael Gira and members old and new in the rudest possible health. Huge slabs of rhythm fell like someone kicking tombstones to the ground, and Gira's 3-year old daughter duetting with Devendra Banhart (a man who has sung more than most about children) was creepy in every sense, but it was the none-more-black nature of My Father... that made it such a perversely enjoyable record in the day-glo indie climate; when Gira sings "we are reeling the liars in" you can hear the smirk on his face.

7. Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti - Before Today

Speaking of day-glo, Pink's debut on 4AD saw considerably less arsing around, resulting in him making the album few thought he was capable of making: a practically flab-free collection of goofy but glorious songs spanning glam-rock (Little Wig), goth-metal (Butthouse Blondies) and cheesy synthpop (Can't Hear My Eyes), as well as delivering a rousing single in the form of Round And Round. Pink remained as much of an oddball as ever (Menopause Man was testament to that), but Before Today saw him seize the throne of a glo-fi scene he'd created almost single-handedly.

6. Sufjan Stevens - The Age Of Adz

Having teased us with the "slight" 50 minutes of closet-clearing EP All Delighted People just a month or so prior, Sufjan let loose with his most audacious record yet. From the album's sci-fi artwork and the skittery electronic beats and bleeps and ominous orchestration, you could be forgiven for thinking Sufjan had made the switch from christianity to scientology, but underneath all the pizazz and vocoders (yes, vocoders) was a human being, one wracked with insecurities and self-doubt. He countered this by putting his all behind every second of Age of Adz, and he wants us to know it, to the point where he's screaming at us "I'm not f*cking around" over and over. Now there's conviction for you.

 

20-16

15-11

The Ones That Got Away

Review: Sufjan Stevens - The Age Of Adz

I'm getting London Bus syndrome with Sufjan Stevens at the moment. You wait 5 years for a proper release from the guy, and then two come along at once. August's All Delighted People EP (an LP's-worth of material to anyone else) was a closet clearer in the very best sense; a varied and at times exuberant collection of odds and sods that both nodded at the Sufjan who made Illinois and Michigan, whilst making clear hints towards pastures new.

Nothing, however, could quite prepare anyone for The Age Of Adz, an immense and initially almost unfathomonable work which sees Sufjan embrace all kinds of electronic bells and whistles in what is his busiest sounding record to date. Opening track Futile Devices is a red herring, albeit a fantastic one, full of the intricate guitar-picking and floaty vocals that Sufjan is so good at. Then Too Much squelches its way into view, anchored with the hums and drones and skittery beats that littered Kid A. Yet whilst Kid A was the sound of a band eschewing traditional instrumentation, The Age Of Adz still retains most of Sufjan's hallmarks: the angelic female backing vocals; the flourishes of orchestration; the fluttering of flutes. Now though, there's an added sense of urgency and desperation, something which translates into the lyrics. On Too Much a chorus of voices sings "there's too much riding on that" over a clattering coda. "Barricade the bathroom doors" cries Sufjan on Get Real Get Right as the song constantly raises its key, seemingly spirally inexorably toward the skies. Then there's his Thom Yorke-esque strangled delivery of the refrain "I'm not f*cking around" over I Want To Be Well's frantic mantra, one of the most exhilirating songs he's ever put to tape.

Self-doubt looms all over The Age Of Adz too, not surprising, given Sufjan's recent bouts of depression. On I Walked, he remarks "I walked/ 'cause you walked/ but I won't probably get very far". No longer restrained by a state-sized concept, The Age Of Adz is one of the personal offerings in Stevens' canon. Even so, the androids and extra-terrestrial deities that adorn the album's artwork don't feel out of place; you could imagine the hisses. gurgles and foreboding orchestration that usher in the title track soundtracking some skyscraper-sized robot laying waste to a city.

Yet amidst the chaos, there are moments of unadulterated beauty here. Now That I'm Older is formed on heavenly backing vocals and ripples of autoharp which swell and shimmer, allowing Sufjan's vocals to echo weightlessly over the top. It's one of the album's simpler arrangements, devoid of the clutter that appears elsewhere, and no more so than on the culminating 25 minute-long Impossible Soul, which features auto-tuned vocals, joyous exclamaitons of "it's not so impossible" and "boy/we can do much more together!" and a whole bundle of right-turns which eventually see the album go full-circle to the rustic playing which opened proceedings some 75 minutes previously. When guest vocalist Shara Worden's soothing tones tell us "don't be distracted", it's hard not to be, what with so much going on.

So yes, The Age Of Adz is overwhelming at times, and for the less patient it will be met with admiration but little love. But when things fall into place, as they so often do, Sufjan hits heights of songwritings that his contemparies cannot even see, let alone reach. In another crisis of self-confidence Sufjan notes, seemingly in disgust that "ordinary people are everywhere you look/ everywhere you turn". He needn't worry.

89/100

Raise Your Hands!

Sufjan's back with a new EP! With the 50 States project seemingly well and truly canned, all has been a bit too quiet on the Sufjan Stevens front for too long, so the All Delighted People EP is like a bolt out of the blue. Thankfully, the wait for new material has been worth it, as what is supposedly an EP is in fact an 8-track, 50-minute epic. He never has been one to do things by halves has he?

Stylistically, All Delighted People is a mix of the old and new, and no better is that represented than on the immense title track. The inclusion of the same track twice on the same release is always a questionable move, not least when it's 10 minutes long, but the two arrangements here are so different, they could almost be different songs. The first, with its vocal acrobatics and its labyrinthine twists and turns, could almost be the Dirty Projectors, whilst the warmer musical arrangement of the second version is much more in-keeping with the Sufjan who recorded Illinois. Elsewhere, there's the usual lavish arrangements and angelic female vocals on the likes of Enchanting Ghost and From The Mouth of Gabriel, whilst the real curveball comes in the seventeen-minute Djohariah. Its opening 10 minutes of guitar-noodling would seem like a major over-indulgence were it not for the fact that it's just one element of an exhilirating build-up, that breaks away suddenly into a surprisingly spare track.

All riveting stuff, and all for the very wallet-friendly price of $5. All Delighted People is currently available to stream on Sufjan's bandcamp page. Welcome back Sufjan!

UPDATE: There's a new Sufjan LP on the way too! The Age Of Adz comes out on October 12th on Asthmatic Kitty Records.