Sufjan Stevens “Javelin” Album Review

Javelin

Sufjan Stevens

• Genre: Alternative
• Date: 06 Oct, 2023
• Content: explicit
• Track(s): 10
• ℗ 2023 Asthmatic Kitty Records

Sufjan Stevens makes a comeback with “Javelin” after experimenting with electronic music on his albums “The Ascension” from 2020 and “Convocations” from 2021. His roots as a singer-songwriter are once again on display throughout the record. The album’s almost entirely hand-made sounds are reminiscent of the early DIY style of Stevens and sound precisely and personally crafted.

Stevens’s sweet vocals and a gentle acoustic guitar are the only instruments present at the beginning of each song, giving the impression that he is singing these songs only for his own ears. This is the most in command of his vast talents he has ever been, and the result is his best album yet. “Javelin” is neither a return to form nor a fresh path. It’s a modest acknowledgment made in the middle of one’s career.

Album Cover Art

A collection of portraits and selfies of various people of different genders and races come together to make up Javelin’s album cover.

Tracks and Features

The song “Goodbye Evergreen” progresses from a soft piano throb and Stevens’ pleading vocals to a whirling wall of sound, a clanging percussion interlude, and then shifts into an atmospheric mode with a kaleidoscope of sounds spinning around the stereo field. The inventiveness of Jim O’Rourke’s lavish productions and Sweden’s Loney Dear’s home studio brilliance are somehow combined in the song, perhaps with a dash of Cat Stevens’ sincere straight-talking.

The method is more subdued on some tunes. “Javelin,” the title track of the album only includes gauzy strings and sporadic background vocals in addition to the delicate acoustic guitar and vocals. The lyrics, which appear to be about nearly javelining your lover, can be better understood by the audience due to the music’s simplicity.

Some tunes lead listeners on unexpected adventures. Although “A Running Start” initially seems like an emo song with a nylon-stringed acoustic guitar, ultimately a piano, synthesizer, and choir voices are added to the aural cocktail. The track has a lullaby-like air to it, with soft strings accompanying the chiming bells and choral wails. These contrasts—between the little and the large, the supernatural and the natural—coincide with what Stevens has always excelled at as a lyricist: uniting the general and the particular.

The inclusion of a banjo in “Will Anybody Ever Love Me?” may unintentionally provide the answer to the singer’s loneliness. Listening to “So You Are Tired” is similar to getting into bed on a chilly night. The mellow sorrow of the vocals and acoustic guitar makes one feel as though they are sleeping on a soft mattress.

Stevens asks his lover to “rest your head” as they go back “fourteen years” in the complicated breakup song, which is a lament about being tired of Stevens.” The song so perfectly captured the kindness that blooms between two individuals after all the quarrelling. It’s the last action before the inevitable resolution, as Stevens aptly and clearly puts it in “Shit Talk.”

Tracklist

NO	TITLE	TIME
1	Goodbye Evergreen	3:35
2	A Running Start	4:21
3	Will Anybody Ever Love Me?	4:09
4	Everything That Rises	4:59
5	Genuflecting Ghost	3:32
6	My Red Little Fox	3:42
7	So You Are Tired	4:49
8	Javelin (To Have And To Hold)	1:52
9	Shit Talk	8:31
10	There’s A World	2:29

Album Theme

Stevens has used the language of love songs to communicate religious commitment and vice versa throughout his career. Across “Javelin,” he appears to be keen on knowing and being understood, with the goal of uncovering the connecting thread between his favorite subjects: raising the countless questions that lead us to seek meaning in one another, and reveling in the joy of sometimes finding it. And if he occasionally sounds like he’s singing to us from the bottom, it’s only so we can see the steady progress.

Production Credits

With assistance from a few pals, including harmonies from Adrienne Maree Brown, Hannah Cohen, Pauline Delassus, Megan Lui, and Nedelle Torrisi, among others, Stevens produced the album primarily by himself in his home studio.

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