Sufjan Stevens - Age of Adz

Why is this album so under-appreciated/underrated?

Did y'all miss on a good bitch?

>Boy
>We can do much more together

Couple of reasons

>People were expecting another 50 states album
>People were expecting another folk thing
>this was literally too complicated for some
>too experimental

basically audiences being full retards as usual

this album gets posted here more than sufjan's other albums

Illinois is definitely the most popular here, or Carrie & Lowell
that makes sense, I see it as the logical conclusion of his past projects (the narrative deteriorates, leaving the author exposed), but I can get how the album's electronic arrangements could be jarring compared against her earlier, lighter folk stuff.

Still, this shit was all forecasted by Enjoy Your Rabbit, which is HELLA underrated/appreciated

This album is not good. Compositionally, apart from Futile Devices, I Want to Be Well and Vesuvius is extremely underdeveloped and seemingly lazy. Production and arrangement-wise, many tracks just fall flat on their face and sound cheap (especially in regards to electronics). Lyrics are up to Sufjan standards though and at least keep the album somewhat listenable and I really appreciate the ambition of the project (which was severely lacking in Carrie & Lowell) but overall the execution was just weak compared to Illinois

I wholeheartedly disagree with you. I find tracks like "Age of Adz" and "Get Real, Get Right" to be compositionally complex while still retaining elements of good pop music and his melodic sensibilities. I think it's on a lot grander scale than any of his other albums, it's gargantuan, it's a crisis.

>I find tracks like "Age of Adz" and "Get Real, Get Right" to be compositionally complex
Age of Adz and Get Real Get Right are extremely simple compositionally though and heavily rely on repetition to make it "catchy"
>I think it's on a lot grander scale than any of his other albums
I completely agree, and I really admire that about this album, I just think it was executed poorly

Please define what you think "compositionally" means and what you think "underdeveloped" means because honestly you sound like you have 0 clue what you're talking about

When I am talking compositionally I mean excluding production and arrangement choices, just focusing on the main melodic and harmonic components of the song. Although I think the production choices are probably the worst part of the album, many of the songs are "underdeveloped" by containing few melodic and harmonic ideas but trying to make up for it by using repetition. If you think the songs are fine as they are, then it's okay. I'm not trying to get people to dislike the album, I'm just sharing why I think it is one of Sufjan's weakest albums

this album is pretty good but like most Sufjan projects they just get really samey after a while

Impossible Soul is so good

people hate on sufjan because he is the perfect human being

it's way more technical and expressive than C&L despite the latter being more emotional.

futile devices is genius in its simplicity, while too much and impossible soul, with its amazing final song to finish the masterpiece, push the technical and creative boundaries more than the other albums.

>I WANT IT ALL
>I WANT IT ALL FOR MYSELF
fuckin love this album

>judging the song on the number of chords used
>what is orchestration
>what is texture
>what is timbre
>what is minimalism

>by number of chords used

absolutely fucking retarded

and all of those other things

describe them, what i'm asking is not for you to tell me what they are, i'm asking to see if you even know what they actually mean

its has some of his best songs and worst.
the electronic bits didn't age well at all. especially if you actually listen to electronic music beyond an entry lvl

futile devices and impossible soul are 10/10

It's quite accurately rated though. Plenty of people regard it as his best work; some prefer the instrumentation and arrangements of Illinoise and others the pared-down songwriting of Carrie and Lowell, but it's generally held as one of his strongest work. It also isn't as easy a listen, you're less likely to be in the mood to sit through Impossible Soul regardless of its quality than you are something like Chicago.

futile devices, as well as the end of impossible soul both sound like they're the early stages of carrie and lowell's style

Impossible Soul is the greatest musical achievement of the 21st century.

>Why is this album so under-appreciated/underrated?

But it's not? If anything its overrated, Sufjan cant into electronic production, something that has been apparent since Enjoy Your Rabbit, which is just bad.

Hey I see you're being aggressive but I'll try to be as brief and direct as possible.

>orchestration
polyphony across multiple instruments. So a song could have a steady melody but feature different instrument colors, something that is present in "I Want to Be Well"
>Texture
An outline of the music, showing what elements happen, when and in relation to what
>Timbre
Quality of sound (wave shape). Sufjan actively recorded many different percussive/electronic sounds/noises to use in Age of Adz.
>Minimalism
A song with recurring melody and chords but that has other elements (like the ones mentioned above) interesting enough to keep the listener's attention.

IM NOT FUCKING AROUND

>I WANT IT ALL FOR MY SE-E-E-E-ELF
best Sufjan album

>Vesuvius
>Underdeveloped

Thank you for shutting him up.

he meant that Vesuvius was one of the few tracks which wasn't underdevloped dumbass

It's just not as good as Seven Swans or his State albums. Beats his latest output though, the new acoustic direction just feels like wasted potential compared to his old stuff.

>reading comprehension

this album was posted on Sup Forums constantly back when it came out and Sup Forums was infested with indie fans rather than hip hop fans

Not true both Carrie and Lowell and Illinois are more popular on Sup Forums.

Ok let me tell you why you're woefully wrong in basically all accounts:

>orchestration
>polyphony across multiple instruments

this is not at all what orchestration is about. orchestration is about successful utilization of different voices in order to achieve a particular phonic texture (heterophonic, monophonic, polyphonic et al)

>Texture
>An outline of the music, showing what elements happen, when and in relation to what

also wrong, texture is defined as harmonization i.e. how the voices are placed across the range of the entire piece

>Timbre

you're not wrong here.

>minimalism
>A song with recurring melody and chords but that has other elements (like the ones mentioned above) interesting enough to keep the listener's attention.

this is just plain fucking stupid and absolutely incorrect. 1) minimalism is a shorthand for a particular type of aesthetic and movement that occurred in classical music in the 60s and 2) what you said has nothing to do with that at all, a correct term is economy of musical motives/themes and if you want to be less precise then economy of ideas.

this is what i meant - you have literally 0 fucking idea what you're talking about, yet you choose to take this "objective" stance on why Adz is bad, when in reality it's your own ignorance and taste that drives your criticism. you're no better than a two-bit music critic who can't even understand classical music terms (not classical as in the practice, but classical as in used in music literature throughout treatises and as defined by texts such as the Harvard Dictionary of Music)

please abstain from making brain-dead criticism if you can't even use the vocabulary right you fucking pleb