Aporia - Sufjan Stevens & Lowell Brams: Review
is a singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist who has become an indie legend over the past twenty years for his incredible range of unique songwriting. Albums like Illinois and Carris & Lowell are among the most critically acclaimed of their respective decades but it has been five years and counting since the last proper Sufjan studio album. He has passed the time by working on side projects like Planetarium, his music for the film Call Me By Your Name and his ballet soundtrack The Decalogue. So this collaboration with his step-father and Lowell from the Carrie & Lowell album title is yet another in a long line of outside the box experiments from Stevens.
Review By Lavender:
I love the music of Sufjan Stevens, and I think its hard not to. From the biggest most acclaimed records like Illinois and Carrie & Lowell to the next grade of satisfying releases like Michigan, The Age Of Adz and Seven Swans. Since 2015 his releases have been very hit or miss with me. While I liked his Call Me By Your Name EP and enjoyed Planetarium more than most did, his ballet and the mixtape of Carrie & Lowell leftovers both left a lot to be desired at least when not attached to their respective companion pieces. So I wasn't really sure what to expect going into Aporia but for every good idea Sufjan and Lowell come up with on the record, they also shoot themselves in the foot.
The worst moments on this record are when the pair push so far out of the welcoming world of indie music that the compositions are filled with actively annoying sounds. Determined Outcome has some super shrill synths that sound terrible and totally take me out of the track and The Red Desert is even worse and goes for a desert style sound but ends up dreadfully messy and far worse than it needed to be in order to just capture a vibe.
The second set of weaker moments on the record are the flat out boring records that are either one boring concept stretched out over a few minutes or a song that never gets interesting in the first place. Glorious You is a track that seems to have no point as its just a short ascending ambient piece that inexplicably cuts out right before its climax. The Unlimited is a long wandering track with somewhat of a build up but once again it never goes anywhere and bows out before anything of any impact happens. Climb The Mountain ironically enough is a weak and incredibly boring track tacked onto the already weak second half of the record. Eudiamonia is a nighttime style ambient track with some gentle keys and tapping percussion that also comes up pretty short and is boring before its short runtime is even over.
I will be sticking to the more substantial tracks on the record but there are also a ton of shorter interlude type songs. Unfortunately the bunch is even more inconsistent than the bigger tracks and while there are a handful of highlights like Disinheritance and Matronymic for the most part the tracks are just brief distractions. The most annoying thing that this album does over and over again is assemble a decent track and barely explore its potential before spending most of the second half of many of these songs simply fading out with mind-numbing ambient outros. Ousia debuts some fuzzy electronics before fading out, What It Takes introduces some light heavenly vocalizing before fading out, Agathon builds some nice tension before fading out and finally Captain Praxis has an icy key refrain before it fades out. Do all these tracks have good moments, yes, but they also all come up short given how little time they devote to their actual ideas.
Despite all the wasted time on the album it does get it right a few times. Misology is one of the most engaging songs here with a creepy stagnant sound that is haunting and mysterious while still doing so little sonically for an impressive set. Afterworld Alliance starts off with some cool layered IDM style passages that are pretty quiet. Just as it looks like it is about to fade out like so many of the other tracks it flips the script on you and comes back even harder with the jittery electronics for one of the best surprises on the entire record. Finally The Runaround is one of the best songs here with some winding synths over a tight drum pattern. The song also has some vocals laced over the top of it and the combination is an eclectic sounding treat that I enjoyed more than anything else here.
Aporia is a pseudo-ambient record that is absolutely crippled by its short song lengths and huge tracklist. The insistence on transitioning rapidly from one song to another brings with it the insistence to fade into and out of songs for WAY too long. A ton of time on this record is wasted but the result is just as disjointed and formless as it would have been without the meaningless transitions, only its twice as long. I have a feeling whatever Sufjan does next will sound nothing like this, and that's probably for a good reason because this just isn't it. 4/10
