In a music world that frequently seems to be predicated on more of the same – the algorithms that direct you to stuff that sounds like stuff you already like, the narrow perameters of genre-specific playlists, the risk-aversion of record labels and established artists alike – there’s something tremendously appealing about the fact that you never quite know what a Sufjan Stevens album is going to sound like. Javelin arrives a few months after his last album, Reflections, a collection of technically challenging instrumental piano duo pieces written as the score to a ballet, reflecting Stevens’ classical training. Although should that sound dauntingly highbrow, it’s worth noting that the concluding piece was titled And I Shall Come to You Like a Stormtrooper in Drag Serving Imperial Realness.
