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| Track List: 1. Futile Devices 2. Too Much 3. Age of Adz 4. I Walked 5. Now That I'm Older 6. Get Real Get Right 7. Bad Communication 8. Vesuvius 9. All for Myself 10. I Want to Be Well 11. Impossible Soul Running time: 74 minutes Released 2010 |
I cannot for the life of me remember what prompted me to pick this up.
I do not own any of Stevens' other work, and despite a friend evangelising a little over him I was never interested. And yet, here is an album; I know I bought it, I have the physical copy. I have made 22 scrobbles in 4 years on random plays but I have never sat down to listen to Sufjan Stevens before so this could be interesting. Or, given this is even longer than my last listen, but lacking the variety of say, 30 Days, this could feel like work. We shall see which!
OK, so the album itself probably isn't 74 minutes, given the last track is listed at 25. Oh joy. Either some non-ending borefest or hidden track idiocy awaits I guess.
I start playing the first track and musically it is better than I expected. Lyrically, I find I cannot really take in too much when I am concentrating on typing up immediate thoughts, so I have presumably been missing a fair bit - at least in the music I did not know before. I am not sure how I feel about that. On the one hand, the exercise of listening is definitely exposing me to stuff I had not made time for, and I am getting something out of that. However I am probably still not giving them a fair crack. Ho-hum.
The pleasant sounds of Futile Devices are not replicated on Too Much. This is a messy track and too long. It could be split in two with no changes such is the change of tone just over half way through. Frankly it is not very good, but the second half does at least keep you guessing by zooming all over the place tonally. The boring repeated lyric returns ("there's too much riding on that" ad nauseum) to close the track, which gives way to the title tune. It is not an auspicious start. More of the same messy sound collage. The vocal is much more interesting but it sounds weak relative to its "backing" which is simply not musical for most of the duration. The track is also too long for something that has structure only in the loosest terms. There is no genius composition here. There is no songwriting of particular note; there is no engagement or strong thread through the piece. I was skeptical before I began this listen, the rest of the tracks need to be killer to bring me round.
The opening of I Walked reminds me of another track, but I cannot place which. It is a very small step in the right direction though - shoegaze-y, muted electronica with a more tuneful vocal overlaid. It is an OK track, but half way through I think it should draw closed, not extend. It is more coherent despite its overlong 5 minutes, and coherence is another thing the two longer tracks really lacked.
Coherence alone does not make things work though. The next two tracks have more again but still lack anything tuneful to engage me. At times, I think I am hearing videogame noises, or one-arm-bandit sounds. It is not what I listen to music for. I do not think it even works as innovation either. There are the odd moments here and there where something interesting threatens to break out but it quickly gets swamped by more noise for the sake of noise.
Vesuvius is the next song that has anything tuneful, but it too is beset by the drive to include odd sounds here and there, which means it loses a lot of potential lustre and ends up being just as unedifying as the rest. At this point I am glad for the IM conversation my friend has struck up (discussing Mascarade - a hidden roles game of chaos and bluffing). It means that I am deliberately diverting some attention from the listen, but I am still playing all the songs through and I am still paying attention. Just not full attention.
I Want to Be Well is an interesting start. This seems to use the weird sound obsession better, focuses it into a more structured format and has some drive, though that seems to get lost in the mid-song turnaround. The pace returns, but with a poor lyric. It's a better song than most of this collection, though that is not saying much. Impossible Soul starts more tuneful but I am conditioned now not to expect it to last... and anyway, even if it does, the track is 25 minutes for heaven's sake. It is getting cut along with most of the album. I'll keep the opener, and probably I Walked.
A pity. Impossible Soul is the most musical piece on the album - at least until 10 mins in when it starts using voice modulation. I am surprised the track has not gone silent. Instead it is cycling through various bad sounds, voice mods being only one component of the weirdness. Of course, I am still only half way through the track. I guess you can see this track as a medley or a mix. Unfortunately in the vein of this album it is a mess and the tuneful song that begins it is crowded out by a load of boring bits and pieces. And there is still 6 minutes left. To be fair, he has confounded both of my predictions for this track before I started.
Right, that's over now. I was willing to have an open mind; I tried not to have too many preconceptions. I even liked the first track! Alas the rest of the album pretty much confirms what I had always felt in terms of not being interested in Sufjan Stevens. If only I had not somehow convinced myself to give him a go; I would have this hour back. Ah well.
OK, so the album itself probably isn't 74 minutes, given the last track is listed at 25. Oh joy. Either some non-ending borefest or hidden track idiocy awaits I guess.
I start playing the first track and musically it is better than I expected. Lyrically, I find I cannot really take in too much when I am concentrating on typing up immediate thoughts, so I have presumably been missing a fair bit - at least in the music I did not know before. I am not sure how I feel about that. On the one hand, the exercise of listening is definitely exposing me to stuff I had not made time for, and I am getting something out of that. However I am probably still not giving them a fair crack. Ho-hum.
The pleasant sounds of Futile Devices are not replicated on Too Much. This is a messy track and too long. It could be split in two with no changes such is the change of tone just over half way through. Frankly it is not very good, but the second half does at least keep you guessing by zooming all over the place tonally. The boring repeated lyric returns ("there's too much riding on that" ad nauseum) to close the track, which gives way to the title tune. It is not an auspicious start. More of the same messy sound collage. The vocal is much more interesting but it sounds weak relative to its "backing" which is simply not musical for most of the duration. The track is also too long for something that has structure only in the loosest terms. There is no genius composition here. There is no songwriting of particular note; there is no engagement or strong thread through the piece. I was skeptical before I began this listen, the rest of the tracks need to be killer to bring me round.
The opening of I Walked reminds me of another track, but I cannot place which. It is a very small step in the right direction though - shoegaze-y, muted electronica with a more tuneful vocal overlaid. It is an OK track, but half way through I think it should draw closed, not extend. It is more coherent despite its overlong 5 minutes, and coherence is another thing the two longer tracks really lacked.
Coherence alone does not make things work though. The next two tracks have more again but still lack anything tuneful to engage me. At times, I think I am hearing videogame noises, or one-arm-bandit sounds. It is not what I listen to music for. I do not think it even works as innovation either. There are the odd moments here and there where something interesting threatens to break out but it quickly gets swamped by more noise for the sake of noise.
Vesuvius is the next song that has anything tuneful, but it too is beset by the drive to include odd sounds here and there, which means it loses a lot of potential lustre and ends up being just as unedifying as the rest. At this point I am glad for the IM conversation my friend has struck up (discussing Mascarade - a hidden roles game of chaos and bluffing). It means that I am deliberately diverting some attention from the listen, but I am still playing all the songs through and I am still paying attention. Just not full attention.
I Want to Be Well is an interesting start. This seems to use the weird sound obsession better, focuses it into a more structured format and has some drive, though that seems to get lost in the mid-song turnaround. The pace returns, but with a poor lyric. It's a better song than most of this collection, though that is not saying much. Impossible Soul starts more tuneful but I am conditioned now not to expect it to last... and anyway, even if it does, the track is 25 minutes for heaven's sake. It is getting cut along with most of the album. I'll keep the opener, and probably I Walked.
A pity. Impossible Soul is the most musical piece on the album - at least until 10 mins in when it starts using voice modulation. I am surprised the track has not gone silent. Instead it is cycling through various bad sounds, voice mods being only one component of the weirdness. Of course, I am still only half way through the track. I guess you can see this track as a medley or a mix. Unfortunately in the vein of this album it is a mess and the tuneful song that begins it is crowded out by a load of boring bits and pieces. And there is still 6 minutes left. To be fair, he has confounded both of my predictions for this track before I started.
Right, that's over now. I was willing to have an open mind; I tried not to have too many preconceptions. I even liked the first track! Alas the rest of the album pretty much confirms what I had always felt in terms of not being interested in Sufjan Stevens. If only I had not somehow convinced myself to give him a go; I would have this hour back. Ah well.
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