The Age of Adz
I wrote this for Twitter's weekly Listening Club, on the week where it was my turn to choose an album everyone would have to listen to, and I chose Sufjan Stevens' challenging "The Age of Adz".
(as a side note, you should join in with Listening Club. Every Sunday at 8PM GMT we all start playing the same album, easily streamed from Mixcloud, and discuss it at length and with as much or as little seriousness as we can muster.)
In my list of genres in my musical library, I have entries for both "Chamber Pop" and "Baroque Pop". There's only one artist in each genre. They're both the same artist, actually, for different albums, and that artist is not the artist you'll be hearing tonight, but it's a useful demonstration that my musical tastes sometimes favour those who don't easily fit into obvious genres; those that straddle several, a lot of the time.
Tonight's artist is no exception. Here's the thing; I was going to go a bit easy on us all. I had something picked that was nice and upbeat, even dancey, and it evoked in me feelings that reminded me of Spring, so it was quite apropos, too. But Listening Club offers the opportunity of both exposing yourself to new things, and in my case, tonight, challenging an audience and showing them something you love.
So I chose this.
You don't get dancey. You don't get Spring. You don't get "nice" and "upbeat", either. You don't even get "easy". Or to be more accurate, you get all of those things at times… it's just not the whole package. Our artist contradicts himself. He is large. He contains multitudes.
So you get love. You get death. You get betrayal, breakups, you get Art, you get God, you get aliens, you get the end of the world. I hope you like brass, strings, and a bit of electronica. Even if you don't, it'll be an experience. Just wait for that last track. I hope it blows your head off like it did with me, and still does.
(as a side note, you should join in with Listening Club. Every Sunday at 8PM GMT we all start playing the same album, easily streamed from Mixcloud, and discuss it at length and with as much or as little seriousness as we can muster.)
In my list of genres in my musical library, I have entries for both "Chamber Pop" and "Baroque Pop". There's only one artist in each genre. They're both the same artist, actually, for different albums, and that artist is not the artist you'll be hearing tonight, but it's a useful demonstration that my musical tastes sometimes favour those who don't easily fit into obvious genres; those that straddle several, a lot of the time.
Tonight's artist is no exception. Here's the thing; I was going to go a bit easy on us all. I had something picked that was nice and upbeat, even dancey, and it evoked in me feelings that reminded me of Spring, so it was quite apropos, too. But Listening Club offers the opportunity of both exposing yourself to new things, and in my case, tonight, challenging an audience and showing them something you love.
So I chose this.
You don't get dancey. You don't get Spring. You don't get "nice" and "upbeat", either. You don't even get "easy". Or to be more accurate, you get all of those things at times… it's just not the whole package. Our artist contradicts himself. He is large. He contains multitudes.
So you get love. You get death. You get betrayal, breakups, you get Art, you get God, you get aliens, you get the end of the world. I hope you like brass, strings, and a bit of electronica. Even if you don't, it'll be an experience. Just wait for that last track. I hope it blows your head off like it did with me, and still does.