Following a foray into electronica with 2020’s The Ascension and 2021’s Convocations, Sufjan Stevens’s Javelin marks a return to his singer-songwriter roots. Nearly every sound on the album sounds meticulously and intimately crafted, harking back to Stevens’s early DIY style. Each track begins solely with soft acoustic guitar and Stevens’s tender vocals, giving the effect that he’s performing these songs for no one else’s ears but his own.
Though less overt than it was on earlier works like 2004’s Seven Swans, religious imagery remains an integral part of Stevens’s music. “Jesus lift me up to a higher plane/Can you come around before I go insane?” he begs on “Everything That Rises.” That said, the song’s arrangement—including heavenly chamber strings and an angelic choir—could imbue even the most secular lyrics with the divine.
As always, expressions of spiritual and romantic devotion are skillfully intertwined in Stevens’s lyrics. On “Genuflecting Ghost,” he could be pleading to God or a lover: “Rise, my love, show me paradise.” Yet, in other moments, his pleas take on a more explicitly devotional tone: “Give myself as a sacrifice/Genuflecting ghost, I kiss the floor/Rise, my love, show me paradise.”
Stevens’s warm, enveloping voice—at times, it’s nothing more than a murmur—serves as a comforting guide as he weaves personal narratives into broader, slow-burning melodramas. On “Will Anybody Ever Love Me?,” his whispery vocals turn to desperation as he yearns for something more than physical desire: “Tie me to the final wooden stake/Burn my body, celebrate the afterglow.” For an artist known for his understated performances, such a slight shift in inflection feels like it carries the weight of the world.
Elsewhere, Stevens draws parallels between his emotions and the natural world. On “A Running Start,” he vividly paints a bucolic scene—“I see the light upon the lake/A pair of eyes, a gentle breeze/Forgotten tales, a wild beast”—as he softly asks for a kiss from his lover. Accompanied by delicate strings, there’s a lullaby-esque quality to the music, with chiming bells and choral wails. These contrasts—between the intimate and the grand, the divine and the natural—dovetails with what Stevens has always done best as a songwriter: bridging the universal and the personal. Javelin doesn’t just feel like a return to form—it feels resurgent.
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