Photo by Sufjan Stevens

To be alone with Sufjan is to be nearer to a god, but to be alone with Sufjan can also be just that: Alone and closer to death. Or at least the sensation of it in a self-catastrophizing sense. After capturing the grief of mortal loss on 2015’s Carrie & Lowell, Stevens’ “So You Are Tired” — the first single from his new album, Javelin — marks a return to his own singer-songwriting devices after a few collaborative detours and a full-scale art-pop experiment with 2020’s The Ascension and is similarly in grief’s throes, here with that of a relationship. There’s no mistaken whether he’s singing to a higher power or a lover as has been a nuanced constant in his written word across his most barebone moments. “So you are tired of evеn my kiss / So go back to your den / Throwing out everything lеft in your field / When there was nothing left to defend,” the listen hears him sigh, solemn and worn. He needn’t much beyond a characteristically hymn-like arrangement of instruments and his own choir of angels to make this breakup beam into the heavens regardless. Even the eulogies from this guy have a way of sounding spiritually aspirational whether we are totally alone in this life or not.

Edited by: Rena Johnson

Sufjan Stevens’ Javelin will be released October 6th on Asthmatic Kitty.