With Javelin, Stevens appears to have channelled his eclectic back catalogue into something so succinct and whole that it’s difficult to not be impressed.

Over the past two decades, Sufjan Stevens has released ten studio albums, earned Academy Award and Grammy nominations and established himself as something of a tour de force when it comes to crafting intricate musical tapestries complemented by intriguingly nuanced lyrics.

His last studio album, Convocations released in 2021, was an epic introspection of grief which spanned 49 instrumental tracks and contained some of his most absorbing work to date. Javelin, sees Stevens go back to basics. The album recorded in Stevens’ home studio is a much tauter affair, built up of ten tracks over 42 laser-focused minutes. But fear not, it still manages to reach epic proportions on a regular basis.

It does this despite its limited instrumentation, which is largely due to its sweeping choral backing vocals and heavy, industrial rhythm sections. Javelin has an uncanny ability to sound both excruciatingly intimate and extraordinarily massive at the same time. It’s an album of contradictions. It’s almost orchestral in places and yet when it’s deconstructed you become acutely aware that its pianos, banjos, guitars and drums are actually incredibly sparse.

On Javelin, Stevens uses a paint-by-numbers approach to his songwriting. Each song starts small and gets big. For a less talented songwriter, this could induce excruciating levels of listener fatigue but fortunately, the output here never drops below outstanding. 

Album opener Goodbye Evergreen sets the precedent. It’s all delicate piano keys and fragile vocals until just after the minute mark it opens up with an explosion of percussion and from that point almost anything is possible. 

Javelin is brimming with ideas, as songs continuously change direction, often without warning. It could quite easily have ended up a bewildering mess but Stevens never loses control of the ship, effortlessly steering us from one earworm to the next. 

Genuflecting Ghost is a highlight which will illicit repeated plays, as well as have you reaching for a dictionary (‘to lower one’s knee as a sign of respect’, apparently). My Red Little Fox follows and plays out like a kind of ethereal waltz, ripped from the pages of a Grimms’ fairytale, “My love, my queen, my spoken dreams come save me. Kiss me like the wind.” 

Lyrically Stevens has always been a cut above, balancing whimsical imaginings that hint at much deeper truths. “So you are seething with laughter, was it really all just a joke? I was a man indivisible, when everything else was broke.” he sings on lead single So You Are Tired, another lyrical highpoint which paints a sombre reflective picture of the fragility of the human condition.  

The album ends with a cover of Neil Young’s There’s A World. It’s the most understated moment here, acting as the perfect coda to a near-flawless album. 

Recently Stevens announced that he had been diagnosed with Guillain-Barre Syndrome, a serious auto-immune disease which had left him learning to walk again. It means the release of Javelin is tinged with even more bittersweet undertones than it should. It’s an occasion that won't feel complete until Stevens is well enough to take to the stage again. Thankfully, he is expected to make a full recovery. 

With Javelin, Stevens appears to have channelled his eclectic back catalogue into something so succinct and whole that it’s difficult to not be impressed. Of course, this idiosyncratic blend of folk revivalist baroque pop might not be for everyone but if it’s your kind of thing then it doesn’t get much better than this.