Sufjan Stevens has been quite the eclectic artist especially as his career continues on. At face-value he has always been a folk artist with an incredible track record filled with high levels of critical acclaim towards 2005’s conceptual masterpiece Illinois and 2015’s stripped back gut-punch Carrie & Lowell. Undoubtedly those record will face the test of time. Overtime Sufjan Stevens has tinkered with more unfamiliar genres like experimental art rock and electropop on The Age of Adz and classical music alongside Bryce Dessner, Nico Muhley, and James McAlister on Planetarium. With knowledge of this career growth, I shouldn’t be as shocked as I am to find out his newest record Aporia ventures into ambient and new-age music. Working with him is his stepfather Lowell Brams who many will know from Carrie & Lowell. There’s always something sweet about an artist working with a family member like Brian and Roger Eno‘s collaboration Mixing Colours earlier this year. Anyways, the real question here is is Sufjan Stevens and Lowell Brams’s experiment with ambient and new-age any good?

Like some of Sufjan Stevens’s genre excursions from the past, Aporia is pretty rough around the edges but more than ever. The record as a whole is very middle-of-the-road compositionally for ambient standards. Many tracks come off as bland and incomplete. Too many tracks are under two minutes in length giving any potentially interesting ideas little to no time to develop. Tracks like “Disinheritance” and “Misology” are begging for more time to progress their swells further. On the other side of things, “Palinodes” and “Matronymic” feel like complete throwaways. Each are grating with their random collection of sour notes over droning synths. Same with “For Raymond Scott” which sounds like when a kid gets their first instrument and tries playing with no knowledge on how to actually play it but with horrifically grainy production slathered on each note.

A lot of the production on Aporia is abysmal. Pianos and strings across all twenty one tracks are brought down by more of that grainy production that at times even becomes staticy. It ruins a lot of the more complete tracks that with production would be middle-of-the-road or even good. The percussion on here are even worse sounding like they’re being struck with a mound of sand on them. The climax on “Ousia” which does have some nice synth progressions becomes completely unlistenable when they pierce through the top of the mix. Same with “Afterworld Alliance” and “The Runaround” that have solid synth patterns (especially the latter) but are made clunky and given speed and energy where none is needed. So many of the tracks try to set a more peaceful mood in which the listener can zone out to, so I do not understand why the snares and other percussion had to be slammed so prominently into the mix.

Luckily there are a few tracks that work around these flaws enough to shine the way they are meant to. “Climb That Mountain” has a subtle progression that tenses up before exploding with majestic synths and Sufjan Stevens’s stunning vocals making their only appearance on Aporia. “Eudaimonia” and “The Red Desert” both create engaging atmospheres, but I definitely prefer the prior because it doesn’t try to throw in ear-piercing synths near the end and just lets the atmosphere finish properly. The closest thing to a homerun is “Captain Praxis” which isn’t really ambient nor new age. Rather it is a fast moving house jam with a clean bassline that subsides into more ambient textures near the end. It is also the only track that has little to no remnants of the production. Although these are the most interesting tracks off of Aporia, I question their placements all near the end of the record making the listener have to sift through mediocre track after mediocre track before hearing the better pieces. I was honestly hoping for Sufjan Stevens and Lowell Brams to bring something new and ingenuitive to new age as a genre. If they conducted more quality control, it could have easily been just that! Instead Aporia is a very disappointing release that doesn’t expand either artist’s sounds while still being enjoyable.

Favorite Tracks: “Climb That Mountain”; “Eudaimonia”; “Captain Praxis”

Rating: 4/10

Released: 03/24/2020

Label: Asthmatic Kitty

Genres: New Age, Ambient

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RATING SCALE

Perfect Excellent Great Very Good Good Meh Disappointing Bad Horrible Pitiful Bottom of the Barrel