Sufjan Stevens’ sixth studio LP proper was always going to be tricky. Having earlier vowed to write a series of albums themed around each of the USA’s 50 states, he confessed it had been a “promotional gimmick.”
He’d gotten as far as 2003’s Michigan and his brilliant 2005 chamber pop breakthrough Illinois, but now he was ditching the project. There would be no baroque Arkansas, no folky, banjo and brass-imbued Utah. Instead, we got The Age Of Adz – something else entirely.
