Released: 2023
If breaking up was easy to do then there probably wouldn’t be very much to write about. Sufjan Stevens has, almost without fanfare, become one of America’s most revered modern song writers. but up until the point of his tenth album Javelin, he’d kept the upper part of his personal iceberg away from the rats of celebrity gossip.
Dedicating it to his former partner Evans Richardson, who died had earlier in 2023, it was an album full of introspection, spirituality and in places, remorse. Not as structurally ambitious as the classic Carrie And Lowell, neverthless having license to move a listener through phases was one that the singer fully excercised.
The centrepice was Shit Talk, a blunt title for a tender rumination on being in a toxic downward spiral of attachment. Amongst the wreckage flowed airy traces of bluegrass and pastoral warmth, but the most intimate of lyrics spoke to Stevens’ wounds being too deep to easily heal. A study since forever, heartbreak still had rarely sounded so heartbreaking.
The Voice Of Unreason 