This week's Album of the Week is Sufjan Steven's The Age of Adz. The album's title is a reference to schizophrenic artist Royal Robertson whose art depicted his visions of space aliens and the apocalypse (as seen in the cover art). Sufjan used Robertson's life and art as the inspiration for this album. He recently explained during a live show in Chicago that he finds Robertson's work dark and terrifying but beautiful at the same time. The music he created with this in mind is so similar in the way that it can be slightly terrifying at times, then suddenly upbeat but always beautiful. The composition of this album is complex, confusing but very obviously well thought out. You can spend one moment paying attention to just the electronic video-game like sound effects and then notice there is a brass section, strings, piano and a choir of voices as well. He even experiments with some Kanye-west style auto tuning on the last track that is an epic 25 minutes. I'm not sure everyone will love this album as much as I do but when an album comes around that is this creative and artistic it has to be mentioned. I've put the whole album on a playlist below for your listening pleasure... enjoy.
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