Sufjan Stevens :: "I Walked"

Sufjan Stevens played the Bowery Ballroom this fall and it was sold out as a matter of course. It had been four years and a little bit since he played five straight nights at the same venue promoting his masterpiece, Illinois. At one of those 2005 shows, he called on the imagery of prom night, even having two members of the audience slow dance to cement this in our guts: It was prom night. By this winter it was not prom night anymore. It had been four years and he had done some weird things and we hadn't really heard from him. This felt more like getting coffee with an estranged ex-girlfriend.

Stevens played new material that cold night this past October. Odd electronics mixed with a-rhythmic verses and even occasional dissonance as the audience glanced around nervously. But if it was unsettling for the crowd, it was certainly not for Stevens. These were his first new, original songs since 2004 and he seemed at home in a new direction, away from states and towards something nearly futuristic and vaguely uncomfortable. That collection is The Age of Adz, due October 12 and it will represent this new artist who so blithely wrinkled his own fans noses at Bowery a year ago.

This is not to say The Age of Adz will be badly experimental, merely that it marks a serious break. If anything can be gathered from first track, "I Walked," it is that Stevens is still exploring the outer reaches of chamber-pop, haunting background vocals and soaring melodies in tow. But the aesthetic is undeniably different. Other than Sufjan's trademark keep-it-like-a-secret hushed vocals, the soundscape bears little resemblance to anything in his heretofore discography. The lyrics address the reality of walking away (or is it chasing someone) while Stevens himself moves from where we left him to where The Age of Adz will leave us. It will be different and it is most certainly not 2005. He is moving on and we are moving too, whether we move together is absolutely up for debate.

Woodhands :: "Pockets"

Imagine for a minute you've been quietly converted from a carbon-based life-form to something different. Imagine you've been turned into something written in silicon, all your cells and bodily functions quietly replaced by zeros and ones and fiber optic cable. Now imagine it happened overnight. How long would it take you to recognize a difference? Couldn't we assume that the programmers of this "new you" would have taken special care to not allow you to notice that you were nothing approaching organic and almost entirely digitized? It certainly raises some questions. Woodhands aren't going to help you.

Now, assume that this transformation became more and more apparent to you over a matter of weeks until it was almost unavoidably obvious. You felt less and less like yourself and more and more like a silicon copy. And then there was this horrible moment where you realized everything that happened. You feel a unique kinship with the ATM and your personal computer. You hear messages in synthesizers and can translate that screaming sound a dial-up modem makes before it connects. Imagine your panic. You take off running. You need to flee the city and run wild like the Frankenstein's monster you are. You burst through your front door and take-off down your street, running at 30-40 miles per hour (you can do that now). This is the song that's playing. Your frantic digital feelings count for nothing. You are a robot.

Listen :: Woodhands - "Pockets"

Young Galaxy :: "Long Live The Fallen World"

Contradictions find their way into song titles like swear words find their way into cable television programs. It's not entirely unwelcome or inappropriate and, if you're being honest, you were prepared for something like this. You are not shocked.

Young Galaxy's "Long Live The Fallen World" is a disjunction in title and sound. Out of the gates they showcase an all-business 4/4 beat before unleashing some positively smoldering synths. The aesthetic is something out of an eastern European nightclub. The vocals, every bit like the girl from now defunct Vancouver band The Organ, are full of ache. And the chorus, sounding a little like a late 90s REM melody/backing vocal, spits the title lyric.

And maybe at the 3.50 mark, they could have called it a song. But the song is 4.57 for a reason. The pace quickens noticeably. The arrangement lurches forward like the relief of a loosening traffic jam. Plunking synth-stabs rain down until the sky is covered in electronics and then it's really over; maximum velocity and then nothing. It is a drastic turn and a good one. But hell, if contradictions are a bitch, you weren't built for network anyways.

Listen :: Young Galaxy - "Long Live The Fallen World"