Sufjan Stevens - "Javelin"
"Everything heaven-sent/Must burn out in the end"
Sufjan Stevens is another artist whose name I’ve heard repeatedly over the last several years, but otherwise only ever heard a track or two from. A coworker, for example, included one of his songs in the office Music League, and I enjoyed it.
So when I saw his name on the list of upcoming releases, I figured I should give his work a proper go.
And I’m not disappointed.
Javelin is a slow-and-steady, contemplative Indie Folk and Folktronica album which, ultimately, serves as a vessel for an elaborately poetic extended metaphor. There are no upbeat songs, and most songs start low before swelling to a polyphonic climax and then deflating again. This is standard enough that the resulting pattern gives the effect of the album breathing over the course of its ten tracks.
The songs are all simple, atmospheric folk with heavy electronic elements punctuating them, especially helping to enhance the swells with each ‘in-breath’. With as big as some of these moments get, it’s important to note that the entire album was recorded in Stevens’ home; there was no studio. In fact, I’ve seen several outlets make a point of specifying that this album marks a return to Stevens’ “singer-songwriter mode”, which he last utilized for 2015’s Carrie & Lowell, an album which was largely about his mother, her passing, and the complexities of their relationship. I do not, currently, have any understanding as to the differences between the mode used for the singer-songwriter style albums, such as Carrie & Lowell and Javelin, and the mode employed for the two albums released between them (2020’s The Ascension and 2021’s The Convocation).
What I can say is that the music found here is beautiful and wildly poetic. It is currently unknown how much the album is influenced by the death of Stevens’ long-term partner; Stevens has seemingly grieved in private since his passing six months ago, with the album’s dedication, which he posted on his website on the day of Javelin’s release, serving as the announcement.
As deep as the album’s thematic elements run, there is no way that it was put together in just six months. However, it isn’t impossible for this monumental event to have impacted the album in some way. Sufjan, however, doesn’t seem to be the sort who openly discusses the meaning of his work. Even if he was, he was diagnosed with Guillian-Barre Syndrome in September, an autoimmune disorder which, for now, means he is incapable of walking.
It’s been a hard year for a lot of people, but Stevens seems to be having an especially rough time of it.
This makes the emotional complexities in Javelin even more beautiful. The album is mournful, but optimistic; distraught, but hopeful. This is true lyrically, tonally, and musically. It’s an extended anthem for anybody who is in the midst of an emotional gauntlet.
Love and Pain are the central ideas, combining into this overarching theme that love is pain, and yet it’s still the most desirable feeling in the world. And I should note that this is really just my best current hypothesis on this album at the moment — the lyrics aren’t remotely clear-cut, nor is any of the supporting material (of which there is a lot).
I’d like to take a moment here to spotlight the LA Review of Books’ article on the album, which is an incredibly well-written spotlight piece. If you’re interested in trying to digest the album’s thematic elements further, this piece provides a lot of food for thought.
The album’s booklet is a whopping 48-pages long, and every detail in it was crafted by Stevens. All of the images, most of which maintain the collage theme as the album cover. And then there are the ten “essays”. Personally, I would prefer to describe them as prose poetry, given the painstaking diction presented within. No matter what we call them, these are available to read online here. There are ten essays/poems, each seemingly half-autobigraphical and half-fantastical and all imaginative. The ten essays seem to line up perfectly with the ten tracks on the album; both sets seem, to me, to present a slight rising-then-falling action like a thrown javelin.
I should also note that the ten essays/poems’ titles present a complete sentence:
“My Love” “Is” “A Weapon” “Thrown” “Onto” “The” “Oblivion” “Of” “Your” “Body”
Within both the lyrics of the songs and within these essays/poems, Stevens utilizes a lot of malapropisms to great effect — common phrases and idioms with intentional twists which, in this case, work to layer additional meaning into the lyrics.1 On both fronts, this album presents some of the best and most poetic moments of the year.
I want to close out this review by taking a moment to applaud Stevens for his subversion of one of my pet peeves: repetition. It’s one of the easiest ways to turn me off of a song. And “Shit Talk”, just from reading the lyrics, looks incredibly worrisome on this front. However, Stevens and his incredibly talented friends (who provide backing vocals throughout the album) manage to turn these moments into musical glory. It starts with straightforward repetition, sure, but then it explodes into complex harmonies before Stevens pulls it back to start the next section, and then it slowly builds back out, bigger and bigger, into diverse harmonies all over the scale. Then, for good measure, a mournful violin is added in to cap it all off. The lyrics end at around the six minute mark, and the song slowly winds down with light instrumentals and vocalizations for another two-and-a-half minutes.
There are a lot of exquisite moments on the album, but the climax of “Shit Talk” takes the cake.
The album does close on a cover song: Neil Young’s “There’s a World”, from his Harvest album.2
If you like folk music, or music which is light and atmospheric, this one is a must. If you’re a fan of poetry and deep, complex emotionality in your music, don’t pass this one up. If you’re looking for a bop, go elsewhere.
Rating: Blue
For example, from “Shit Talk”: “Do as I say not as I give up”
The name of the Neil Young album feels pertinent here because of the bizarre twist in the final essay/poem, wherein the speaker is abducted. By aliens. At the mall.