The oeuvre of Sufjan Stevens can be difficult to navigate for the uninitiated. If attempted chronologically you can find yourself wading through the instrumental Enjoy Your Rabbit, a record that hints at the visionary production that he’d later apply to his songwriting. I’ve heard people refer to Know Your Rabbit as his best work but it unquestionably is not. It’s formative and signposts an incredible career to come but his songwriting has moved ever forward since. He’s a man of problematic spirituality, always seemingly trying to reconcile his Christian faith with the world around him and that comes through on Seven Swans, Michigan, Illinois et al. Heck, he even dropped 10 separate Christmas records that contain some incredible songs (as well as a good portion of filler). He obsesses over the notion of relationship, both micro-human and beatific on both Michigan and Age Of Adz but the two records are so sonically different so as they may well be different artists.

We’re now on the eve of Sufjan’s Seventh Studio record Carrie & Lowell (peep the trailer here) and people are already referring to it as “a return to Sufjan’s folk roots” but I’ll believe that when I hear it. Sufjan’s nature is by nature progressive but similarly he is sentimental enough to let nostalgia push him back to his early sounds. To get you thoroughly prepared, I’m taking you on a journey through his [very] disputably 10 best songs. Curating this down to ten was HARD so y'all owe me bigtime for my efforts.

John Wayne Gacey Jr

Only Sufjan has the lyrical sensibility / necessary spiritual girth to write a song that encompasses the concept of grace as well as one of the most notorious serial child rapists/murderers the modern world has known. Dark as hell with a hint of light at the end of the tunnel, or just plain dark, depending on your dogma. “And in my best behaviour I am really just like him”. The sigh at the end of this song is almost the only possible reaction to a song with sufficient conceptual weight as to bog the soul

I Want To Be Well

I had Heirloom included in this list as my tenth but I immediately had to remove it when I remembered this song existed. The whole track feels like a futuristic car chase scene between skyscrapers that gets faster and more insane with each passing moment. Halfway through the track he introduces the refrain of “I want to be well” but the cadence makes it sounds more like “Well I want to be” and the choral harmonies take up this refrain for the rest of the song underneath Sufjan calling out “Well I’m not fuckin around”, followed by throated gutteral noises, monstrous tom rolls and explosive laser synth. Look. Ugh this is hard but I think I have to say it. This is the best song Sufjan has ever made. Probably not the best one he’s written, but sonically, this is where it’s at.

Seven Swans

45 seconds of slow banjo introduction that leads into weightless vocal lines that lead into slow piano chords that grow into more substantial vocal sections, added to with female backing vocals, vocal padding behind heavier lyrical sections and then you’re there. The big ending starts to unfold. I know it’s called Seven Swans and I know you’ll think I’m relating these two for titular reasons, but it builds like a track from Swans and crashes similarly. A masterclass in patience and minimalism that speaks out ideas from the book of Revelation. It’s from the record of the same name, Sufjan’s most overtly Christian record but one that still shows a spirituality that refuses to be neatly categorised.

For The Widows In Paradise, For The Fatherless In Ypsilanti

Back before he was engulfed in opera, orchestra and electronic production, Sufdaddy made a lot of fans just strumming the pants off his banjo underneath songs that made funerals seem like carnivals. There’s always at least a hint of optimism but more then that is the sombre gravitas in heaps and mounds. This one has a really perfect horn section and it’s conclusion reminds me of that time when Beirut were a thing but is subtle enough not to override the song wuth gusto. It’s from a record called Michigan, named as part of his on-again-off-again 50 States Project (a plan to write an album for every state in the USA) that he would later on call “Such a joke”. He managed a record for both Michigan and Illinois but that was where it ended.

Angels We Have Heard On High

Look, full disclosure, my wife walked down the aisle to this track so it’s gonna get in here no matter how the cards fall. I did need to make sure there was at least one from his Christmas catalogue (which sounds awful but is INCREDIBLE) though so this is that one. If you haven’t explored it there are ten Christmas records (read it, ten records) that he released in two batches of five.

All Delighted People

Manic near twelve minute orchestral track that heralded the release of his EP of the same name. Big, swelling, cacophonous, noisy, silly, choral. The whole EP (all 59 minutes of it) dropped overnight at the end of August 2010 leaving his fans a little unsteady, only for him to then drop an entire new record (Age Of Adz) not even a month later. He’s either very good at playing the Game or very bad at it, we’ll probably never know.

Vesuvius

If you can’t pick the general theme of Vesuivus just from the title then you probably never carried Ancient History as a subject at school, but that’s not the reason the song is so good. First, it sounds incredible, so there’s that, but lyrically it morphs from a literal track about Vesuviusto an insanely vulnerable section wherein Sufjan puts his neuroses on the table. #Real. #Life. “Sufjan / Follow the path / It leads to an article of imminent death / Sufjan / Follow your heart / Follow the flame or fall on the floor / Sufjan / The panic inside / The murdering ghost that you cannot ignore”

Age Of Adz

The title track from his 2010 opus Age Of Adz that broke the brains of traditionalist Sufjan fans by unprooting his folk ancestry and diving headlong into an orchestral maelstrom of electronica. It’s the second longest song from the record coming in at eight minutes which is a candle before the bonfire of the 26 minute long Impossible Soul that closes off the record. An insane jam that waxes and wanes across its minutes.

To Be Alone With You

Look, I’m not going to call this the greatest song ever written about the crucifiction but I’ll say it’s a pretty personal one. It’s not full of overly verbose theological dissertation but simply an emotional response to Calvalry which he manages to do without going full Hillsong on the thing. I know in 2015 there are few things as distasteful as the notion that humanity was created but I promise that this is tasteful spirituality. It’s also written in this fantastic binary that pairs human sacrifice for earthly love with that of the divine.

Futile Devices

Internet synopses of this song will have you believe it’s about a platonic friendship but it really isn’t. When he toured Age Of Adz he talked about this song in his live shows saying it was about the futility of words and how he was perpetually caught in the act of lyrical expression and it was crippling. So here’s a two minute simple song of basic love - because words are Futile Devices.



-Tommy Faith