The Age of Adz
Encyclopedia
The Age of Adz is a 2010 album by American indie folk
songwriter Sufjan Stevens
, released on October 12, 2010 by Asthmatic Kitty Records. It is Stevens' sixth studio album and his first song-based full length album in five years, since the release of Illinois
in 2005.
The album features a heavy use of electronics augmented by heavy orchestration, and takes inspiration from the apocalyptic artwork of schizophrenic artist Royal Robertson
. Steven's use of electronics marked a radical departure from much of his previous work—most notably from Seven Swans
and Michigan
. Unlike Illinois, the lyrics do not explore events, characters or setting, but deal instead with themes and emotions on a personal level.
The album was highly praised by critics, particularly for the intimacy of the work. However, critics were divided over the different stylistic direction Stevens had taken. Nonetheless, it appeared on several "best of the 2010" lists—including those of Paste
, The New York Times
and MTV
. Commercially, the album gave Stevens his career's best first week sales to date and was his highest charting album to date, peaking in the top ten on the Billboard 200.
), titled The Avalanche, as well as an album of Christmas music
titled Songs for Christmas
(produced in parts between 2001 and 2006). Following the release of The Avalanche, Stevens expressed a dissatisfaction with his music, stating in interview with Pitchfork Media
in 2006: "I'm getting tired of my voice. I'm getting tired of...the banjo. I'm getting tired of...the trumpet". In 2009 Stevens released The BQE
, an orchestral suite accompanying a home-made film dedicated to the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway
. In an interview with BeatRoute Magazine
in 2010, Stevens stated "[The BQE] kinda sabotaged the mechanical way of approaching my music, which was basically narrative long-form. It really opened things up for me. It also confused things as well. I don’t think I ever really fully recovered from that process". On August 20, 2010, without prior announcement, Stevens released the EP
All Delighted People
, and less than one week later announced The Age of Adz to be released on October 12.
In interviews, Stevens has stated that in 2009–2010 he suffered from a mysterious debilitating viral infection
that affected his nervous system
. He experienced chronic pain, and was forced to stop working on music for several months. He said: "The Age of Adz, is, in some ways, a result of that process of working through health issues and getting much more in touch with my physical self. That's why I think the record's really obsessed with sensation and has a hysterical melodrama
to it."
My Brightest Diamond
frontwoman Shara Worden
is featured on the track "Impossible Soul".
was used for the album's cover and interior. Will Hermes of Rolling Stone said that Sufjan Stevens uses the artwork "as a springboard for music that evokes a visionary psyche." Stevens became interested in the work of Robertson after recording music for a friend's documentary on the artist, and said that "[the more I studied him and his work], the more I felt a weird affinity to this guy and the story of his life." He began to transcribe some of the text that appears in Robertson's artwork, and says this process stayed with him a "long time" and "that some of it started to come up in the lyrics, in the songs I was writing.
gave the album an 80/100 ("Generally favorable reviews") from 33 reviews it compiled. Keith Meatto of the Frontier Psychiatrist described the album as "a musical masterpiece that blends analog and digital sounds as it reflects on love and loss, life and death, humanity and divinity." Entertainment.ie
s Jenny Mulligan describes Stevens as "a strange one, that's for sure, but he may just be a genius." Uncut
commented that the album provides plenty of evidence to argue that he is either "one of the most important songwriters of his generation" or "just an infuriating, neurotic show-off".
Alex Petridis of The Guardian said that although the album "goes a bit barmy and over-the-top." there are some "incredible tune[s]" that are "not only genuinely remarkable, but genuinely enjoyable". On the intimacy of the album, James Skinner of Drowned in Sound noted that "Peer into The Age of Adz long enough and a decisive, highly personal work reveals itself." He believed that the sound of the album could be predicted from earlier works such as The BQE
.
Perhaps the most discussed track of the album among reviewers was "Impossible Soul", which at 25 minutes comprises a third of the overall album length. Pitchfork Media
reviewer Ryan Dombal described the track as having "more engaging ideas than most artists could muster in a career", while No Ripcord
reviewer Alan Shulman criticized the middle sections as being an "epic train wreck", saying that the closing minutes come as "a breath of fresh air". One Thirty BPM
reviewer Rob Hakimian commented that the track would "make or break" the album for listeners, describing it as a successful "proclamation of love", but that it is "bloated" and "way over the top".
Indie folk
Indie folk is a music genre that arose in the 1990s from singer/songwriters in the indie rock community showing heavy influences from folk music scenes of the 50s, 60s and early 70s, country music, and indie rock. A few early artists included Lou Barlow, Beck, Jeff Buckley and Elliott Smith...
songwriter Sufjan Stevens
Sufjan Stevens
Sufjan Stevens is an American singer-songwriter and musician born in Detroit, Michigan. Stevens first began releasing his music on Asthmatic Kitty, a label co-founded with his stepfather, beginning with the 1999 release, A Sun Came...
, released on October 12, 2010 by Asthmatic Kitty Records. It is Stevens' sixth studio album and his first song-based full length album in five years, since the release of Illinois
Illinois (album)
Illinois is a 2005 concept album by American indie folk songwriter Sufjan Stevens. His fifth studio album, Illinois features songs referencing places, events, and persons related to the U.S. state of Illinois...
in 2005.
The album features a heavy use of electronics augmented by heavy orchestration, and takes inspiration from the apocalyptic artwork of schizophrenic artist Royal Robertson
Royal Robertson
Royal Robertson , also known as the self-proclaimed Prophet Royal Robertson, was an American artist.-Early life and marriage:...
. Steven's use of electronics marked a radical departure from much of his previous work—most notably from Seven Swans
Seven Swans
Seven Swans is a folk rock music album by Sufjan Stevens. It includes songs about Christian spiritual themes and figures such as Abraham and Christ's Transfiguration...
and Michigan
Michigan (album)
Bonus tracks included on the double-disc vinyl release:#"Marching Band" – 3:41#"Niagara Falls" – 2:22#"Pickerel Lake" – 3:11#"Presidents and Magistrates" – 4:16#"Vito's Ordination Song" – 5:25#"Wolverine" – 2:10...
. Unlike Illinois, the lyrics do not explore events, characters or setting, but deal instead with themes and emotions on a personal level.
The album was highly praised by critics, particularly for the intimacy of the work. However, critics were divided over the different stylistic direction Stevens had taken. Nonetheless, it appeared on several "best of the 2010" lists—including those of Paste
Paste (magazine)
Paste is a monthly music and entertainment digital magazine published in the United States by Wolfgang's Vault. Its tagline is "Signs of Life in Music, Film and Culture."-History:...
, The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
and MTV
MTV
MTV, formerly an initialism of Music Television, is an American network based in New York City that launched on August 1, 1981. The original purpose of the channel was to play music videos guided by on-air hosts known as VJs....
. Commercially, the album gave Stevens his career's best first week sales to date and was his highest charting album to date, peaking in the top ten on the Billboard 200.
Background and recording
Following his 2005 album Illinois, Stevens would not produce another song-based full length album for five years. In 2006, Stevens released an album of extra material left over from Illinois (originally conceived as a double albumDouble album
A double album is an audio album which spans two units of the primary medium in which it is sold, typically records and compact discs....
), titled The Avalanche, as well as an album of Christmas music
Christmas music
Christmas music comprises a variety of genres of music normally performed or heard around the Christmas season, which tends to begin in the months leading up the actual holiday and end in the weeks shortly thereafter.-Early:...
titled Songs for Christmas
Songs for Christmas
Songs for Christmas is a box set of five separate EPs of Christmas-related songs and carols recorded by independent musician Sufjan Stevens between 2001 and 2006. The EPs had been given as gifts to friends and family of Stevens over the past six years, except for 2004 where he was too busy...
(produced in parts between 2001 and 2006). Following the release of The Avalanche, Stevens expressed a dissatisfaction with his music, stating in interview with Pitchfork Media
Pitchfork Media
Pitchfork Media, usually known simply as Pitchfork or P4k, is a Chicago-based daily Internet publication established in 1995 that is devoted to music criticism and commentary, music news, and artist interviews. Its focus is on underground and independent music, especially indie rock...
in 2006: "I'm getting tired of my voice. I'm getting tired of...the banjo. I'm getting tired of...the trumpet". In 2009 Stevens released The BQE
The BQE (album)
The BQE is a mixed-medium artistic exploration of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway by Sufjan Stevens. The project originally manifested in the form of a live show, performed on November 1–3, 2007...
, an orchestral suite accompanying a home-made film dedicated to the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway
Interstate 278
Interstate 278 is an auxiliary Interstate Highway in New Jersey and New York, United States. The road runs from U.S. Route 1/9 in Linden, New Jersey to the Bruckner Interchange in the New York City borough of the Bronx...
. In an interview with BeatRoute Magazine
BeatRoute (newspaper)
BeatRoute Magazine is a monthly music paper published in Calgary. With a circulation of 10,000, the paper is distributed in Calgary, Edmonton and Lethbridge, Banff, and Canmore. Although primarily focused on music, BeatRoute also publishes articles on art, columns and film reviews. Currently, it is...
in 2010, Stevens stated "[The BQE] kinda sabotaged the mechanical way of approaching my music, which was basically narrative long-form. It really opened things up for me. It also confused things as well. I don’t think I ever really fully recovered from that process". On August 20, 2010, without prior announcement, Stevens released the EP
Extended play
An EP is a musical recording which contains more music than a single, but is too short to qualify as a full album or LP. The term EP originally referred only to specific types of vinyl records other than 78 rpm standard play records and LP records, but it is now applied to mid-length Compact...
All Delighted People
All Delighted People
-Track listing:Compact Disc and digital versions#"All Delighted People" – 11:38#"Enchanting Ghost" – 3:39#"Heirloom" – 2:55#"From the Mouth of Gabriel" – 4:03#"The Owl and the Tanager" – 6:38...
, and less than one week later announced The Age of Adz to be released on October 12.
In interviews, Stevens has stated that in 2009–2010 he suffered from a mysterious debilitating viral infection
Virus
A virus is a small infectious agent that can replicate only inside the living cells of organisms. Viruses infect all types of organisms, from animals and plants to bacteria and archaea...
that affected his nervous system
Nervous system
The nervous system is an organ system containing a network of specialized cells called neurons that coordinate the actions of an animal and transmit signals between different parts of its body. In most animals the nervous system consists of two parts, central and peripheral. The central nervous...
. He experienced chronic pain, and was forced to stop working on music for several months. He said: "The Age of Adz, is, in some ways, a result of that process of working through health issues and getting much more in touch with my physical self. That's why I think the record's really obsessed with sensation and has a hysterical melodrama
Melodrama
The term melodrama refers to a dramatic work that exaggerates plot and characters in order to appeal to the emotions. It may also refer to the genre which includes such works, or to language, behavior, or events which resemble them...
to it."
My Brightest Diamond
My Brightest Diamond
My Brightest Diamond is the project of singer–songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Shara Worden. The band has released two studio albums, 2006's Bring Me the Workhorse and 2008's A Thousand Shark's Teeth, along with a remix album Tear It Down and a download-only release through iTunes...
frontwoman Shara Worden
Shara Worden
Shara Worden is the lead singer and songwriter for My Brightest Diamond. She was previously a backup vocalist for Sufjan Stevens and the frontwoman of Awry.-Life:...
is featured on the track "Impossible Soul".
Artwork
The artwork of Royal RobertsonRoyal Robertson
Royal Robertson , also known as the self-proclaimed Prophet Royal Robertson, was an American artist.-Early life and marriage:...
was used for the album's cover and interior. Will Hermes of Rolling Stone said that Sufjan Stevens uses the artwork "as a springboard for music that evokes a visionary psyche." Stevens became interested in the work of Robertson after recording music for a friend's documentary on the artist, and said that "[the more I studied him and his work], the more I felt a weird affinity to this guy and the story of his life." He began to transcribe some of the text that appears in Robertson's artwork, and says this process stayed with him a "long time" and "that some of it started to come up in the lyrics, in the songs I was writing.
Sales figures and chart performance
The Age of Adz debuted at number 7 on the Billboard 200, with 36,000 copies sold, giving Stevens his career's best first week sales to date. It also gave him his highest charting album to date, peaking in the top ten on the Billboard 200.| Region | Sales charts (2010) | Peak position |
|---|---|---|
| United States | US Billboard 200 Billboard 200 The Billboard 200 is a ranking of the 200 highest-selling music albums and EPs in the United States, published weekly by Billboard magazine. It is frequently used to convey the popularity of an artist or groups of artists... |
#7 |
| Independent Albums Independent Albums The Billboard Independent Albums is a chart of the highest-selling independent music albums and extended plays in the United States, compiled by Nielsen SoundScan and published weekly by Billboard magazine. It is used to list artists who are not signed to major labels... |
#1 |
Critical reception
Critical reception of The Age of Adz was very positive. Review aggregator MetacriticMetacritic
Metacritic.com is a website that collates reviews of music albums, games, movies, TV shows and DVDs. For each product, a numerical score from each review is obtained and the total is averaged. An excerpt of each review is provided along with a hyperlink to the source. Three colour codes of Green,...
gave the album an 80/100 ("Generally favorable reviews") from 33 reviews it compiled. Keith Meatto of the Frontier Psychiatrist described the album as "a musical masterpiece that blends analog and digital sounds as it reflects on love and loss, life and death, humanity and divinity." Entertainment.ie
Entertainment.ie
entertainment.ie is a Dublin-based Irish website which provides extensive cinema, TV, live music, theatre, comedy, exhibition and festival listings for free, as well as celebrity gossip, music and movie news, movie and DVD reviews, CD reviews and up-to-date lottery results.The site was developed in...
s Jenny Mulligan describes Stevens as "a strange one, that's for sure, but he may just be a genius." Uncut
UNCUT (magazine)
Uncut magazine, trademarked as UNCUT, is a monthly publication based in London. It is available across the English-speaking world, and focuses on music, but also includes film and books sections...
commented that the album provides plenty of evidence to argue that he is either "one of the most important songwriters of his generation" or "just an infuriating, neurotic show-off".
Alex Petridis of The Guardian said that although the album "goes a bit barmy and over-the-top." there are some "incredible tune[s]" that are "not only genuinely remarkable, but genuinely enjoyable". On the intimacy of the album, James Skinner of Drowned in Sound noted that "Peer into The Age of Adz long enough and a decisive, highly personal work reveals itself." He believed that the sound of the album could be predicted from earlier works such as The BQE
The BQE (album)
The BQE is a mixed-medium artistic exploration of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway by Sufjan Stevens. The project originally manifested in the form of a live show, performed on November 1–3, 2007...
.
Perhaps the most discussed track of the album among reviewers was "Impossible Soul", which at 25 minutes comprises a third of the overall album length. Pitchfork Media
Pitchfork Media
Pitchfork Media, usually known simply as Pitchfork or P4k, is a Chicago-based daily Internet publication established in 1995 that is devoted to music criticism and commentary, music news, and artist interviews. Its focus is on underground and independent music, especially indie rock...
reviewer Ryan Dombal described the track as having "more engaging ideas than most artists could muster in a career", while No Ripcord
No Ripcord
No Ripcord is an online music and film magazine based in Sheffield, England.-History:The website was originally created in April 1999 by editor-in-chief David Coleman and A.M. Booth...
reviewer Alan Shulman criticized the middle sections as being an "epic train wreck", saying that the closing minutes come as "a breath of fresh air". One Thirty BPM
One Thirty BPM
One Thirty BPM is a New York-based online publication providing reviews, news, media, interviews, features, and more from both the independent and mainstream spheres of the music world...
reviewer Rob Hakimian commented that the track would "make or break" the album for listeners, describing it as a successful "proclamation of love", but that it is "bloated" and "way over the top".
Accolades
Many reviewing sites included The Age of Adz in their best of 2010 lists.| Publisher | Accolade | Rank |
|---|---|---|
| Time Time (magazine) Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong... |
Top 10 Albums of 2010 | Unranked, one of 10 |
| Exclaim! Exclaim! Exclaim! is a monthly Canadian music magazine that features in-depth coverage of new music across all genres with special focus on Canadian and cutting-edge artists... |
Best Pop & Rock Album of 2010 | #8 |
| Pitchfork Pitchfork Media Pitchfork Media, usually known simply as Pitchfork or P4k, is a Chicago-based daily Internet publication established in 1995 that is devoted to music criticism and commentary, music news, and artist interviews. Its focus is on underground and independent music, especially indie rock... |
50 top albums of 2010 | #25 |
| The New York Times The New York Times The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization... |
Top Pop 2010 Anthems | #5 |
| MTV MTV MTV, formerly an initialism of Music Television, is an American network based in New York City that launched on August 1, 1981. The original purpose of the channel was to play music videos guided by on-air hosts known as VJs.... |
20 Best Albums Of 2010 | #10 |
| Paste Paste (magazine) Paste is a monthly music and entertainment digital magazine published in the United States by Wolfgang's Vault. Its tagline is "Signs of Life in Music, Film and Culture."-History:... |
The 50 Best Albums of 2010 | #9 |
Track listing
- Note: On the vinyl release of the album, the last movement (about three minutes) of "Impossible Soul" is moved to the end of side C, just after "I Want to be Well" for reasons of space and time restrictions.