For a very long time, I had no interest whatsoever in Sufjan Stevens. This would still be the case if (a) I had never discovered his series of Christmas albums (b) I had not come downstairs one day as one of my roommates (shouts out Kevin) was listening to the single most interesting moment on this entire album. I have surely described a dozen albums as [artist's] 808s & Heartbreak through the years, but the claim holds up better with The Age of Adz than most (even if it feels a bit useless as a label for anything already within the indie folk idiom). This is another CD that I got from my friend Erik's moving sale, and as a result I've listened to this album near-exclusively in my car. That's perfect, actually, as I'm not sure that there's a single track on here that I would listen to individually (although the one sampled by Mac Miller for Donald Trump - what a moment in time - is catchy). There's a lot of mechanical... whirring throughout the album, and the groove that you settle into three or four tracks in feels more like begrudging acceptance than actual enthusiasm. Nevertheless, the thing proceeds to fly by, feeling less like music than a corruption of your ability to listen to music, until the 25-minute Impossible Soul arrives and leaves you no choice but to sing along or nearly cry or turn off the car radio (all three have happened, sometimes simultaneously).

Two more things:
1. On three occasions, spanning years, I've been told I look like Sufjan Stevens lmao.
2. Besides the specific works mentioned above, Sufjan Stevens still has a lot of shit to answer for.

Highlights: I Walked, Now That I'm Older, Impossible Soul