Sufjan Stevens
All Delighted People – EP
7.5/10 Delighted People
(Or 36/48 Unfinished State Albums—that’s right, Sufjan. I’m still counting.)
If I was crying in the van dorm with my friend, it was for freedom because last October, I stumbled upon an article on Pitchfork in which Sufjan Stevens’ musical world seemed to be crashing down on him. He questioned the point of making music—the relevance of the album, the song, his grand conceptual productions. It was jarring news to hear after nearly five years of waiting since his last proper release (and no, we’re not counting outtakes, Christmas songs or musical scores about crowded expressways in New York). A month later, I snatched up a copy of Paste hoping for good news in their exclusive interview with Sufjan. All I got was more musings on his identity crisis. He’s abandoning the antiquated album format. He vows not to return to Illinois-style song writing. The BQE project has shaken him to his creative core. Forget being haunted by the ghost of Carl Sandburg, it sounded like the ghost of Sartre was whispering sweet existential nothings into Sufjan’s ear as he cried himself to sleep at night. And then seemingly out of nowhere, we were blessed with some rapid-fire announcements from Asthmatic Kitty: fall tour dates, an immediately streamable EP, a new album due October 12th. What?
