Musically, things have changed a bit from Stevens’ previous material. The final three volumes of Silver & Gold were recorded during and after the Sufjan Stevens musical revolution, which saw him adopt a significantly more electronic sound leading up to the 2010 releases of All Delighted People and The Age of Adz. This transformation saw Stevens adding a myriad of synthesized sounds and auto-tuned vocals to his more traditional folk instrumentation and the Christmas music he produced after this turning point is no exception. This journey into more unfamiliar musical territory for Stevens is reflected in the spirit of Volume 8, Christmas Infinity Voyage.

The instrumental experimentation on this album finds Stevens launching into the heavens with soaring electronics, spacey synthesizers and otherworldly vocals. This musical outlet seems to have been exactly what Stevens needed at this point in his Christmas comprehension quest. By pushing the sound of his music into the cosmos and away from the human anxieties of Earth, he has seemingly been afforded the opportunity to become unburdened by the mundane and the secular. He now floats freely, distantly, above it all, with the fresh vantage point of the same celestial beings that may have witnessed the first Christmas. This change in musical direction mirrors a change in Stevens’ opinion on Christmas itself. This voyage into “infinity” seems to have set him on the path toward understanding the point of it all.

There are basically two different, interweaving, stories being told on this album. The first is through a series of songs (all from the traditional “Silent Night bracket”) that are almost exclusively concerned with heavenly entities spreading the word about the birth of the Christian savior. Stevens plays these songs as if he’s right there among the stars and angels, perhaps, counter-intuitively, getting back to the original spirit of Christmas by sending it into outer space. The underlying plot thread then finds Stevens descending altitude slightly and sharing his feelings of contentment about his newfound Christmas enlightenment.

The album starts with a complete re-working of the 19^th century carol, “Angels We Have Heard on High.” Stevens jettisons the original melody and lyrics as the traditional chorus beings with “angels we have heard on high” and Stevens answers by radioing in from the distance: “singing for the earth’s attention.” He goes on to trade lines with the chorus (presumably from the pilot’s chair of his Christmas Gundam Robot) like some Yuletide Bowie in Space: Chorus of Angels – “Shepherds, why this jubilee?” Stevens - “Have you seen the flying saucer?” Though it seems Stevens has only unwittingly found himself here, scarcely believing what to his wondering eyes should appear, he soon joins in the chorus of “glorias” and seems to find some comfort in the ethereal space of the heavens. After the second chorus, Stevens breaks out the big guns, seemingly fiddling with the control panel of his Christmas spaceship, as we get a taste of the bass-heavy synthesized sound that will dominate the rest of the album.

We next hear Stevens fully embracing his role as a member of the heavenly multitudes. Voice awash in auto-tune, having fully converted to electronic instrumentation, he continues the story of the angels delivering the message of Christ’s birth on “Do You See What I See?” It’s a song that explains how the news travels from the “night wind” to a “little lamb” to a “shepherd boy” to a “mighty king” to the “people everywhere.” As the information spreads, the messengers ask each other whether they “see,” “hear,” and “know” the same things now that this, presumably, unifying event has occurred. After the traditional lyrics have run their course, Stevens takes this a step further, deviating from script, and asking “do you feel what I feel now?” in a five minute outro that repeats the sentiment again, and again, in order to thoroughly drive home the point that this is really what is on his mind. Forget “seeing” and “hearing” and “knowing”… can you “feel” this? Stevens warbles through the line over and over through layers of auto-tune that make it sound as if his consciousness has become grafted into the mainframe of his Christmas shuttle.

“Christmas in the Room” comes next but first we’ll cover the improbable five-song run that leads to the album's finale.

First, we get a 48-second instrumental version of “It Came Upon the Midnight Clear,” with a melody that sounds like its being played on a light-sabre, before a computerized voice stoically announces “Merry Christmas” and Stevens launches into another heavily amended version of a traditional carol, “Good King Wenceslas.” Here it sounds like Stevens has taken a detour to a Christmas space station on the moon, denizens yelling, “Hey, it’s Christmas!” upon his arrival. Stevens informs them of the good deeds of Saint Wenceslas before the song, inexplicably, seamlessly transitions into a cover of Prince’s “Alphabet Street.” (The album humorously credits the song to “His Majesty Prince.”) It’s difficult to even begin explaining the thought-process here (assuming there even was one) but the least we might be able to say is that given how surprisingly natural this sounds, it might just be a testament to how comfortable Stevens is becoming with his new outlook on Christmas. It’s no longer a confusing, shameful, marathon of second-guessing. It’s perfectly fine to mix Good King Wenceslas with Good Prince Rogers Nelson. Christmas should sound however you want it to sound.



Alphabet Street transitions into a one-minute Stevens original instrumental composition called “Particle Physics,” (that sounds exactly how you would expect) before finishing up with a take on “Joy to the World.” This is a song that Stevens covered on Songs for Christmas and his change of perspective in the mean time is evident. This is yet one more traditional song on this album, announcing the birth of Christ, that Stevens has morphed into an electronic Christmas celebration. The song spirals out of control as he interpolates lyrics from the Age of Adz song, “Impossible Soul” (“boy, we can do much more together”) and reprises “do you see what I see?” before it sputters to a conclusion, the heavenly message thoroughly delivered and the Christmas Gundam out of gas.

There are two original songs here that Stevens doesn’t play “in character” for the album. The first is the aforementioned “Christmas in the Room.” It’s a relatively straight-forward song that serves as a window into the development of Stevens’ Christmas philosophy mid-infinity-voyage. The idea is basically to take Christmas and make it as small and personal as possible with the person you love; literally reducing it to the very “room” that the two of you are in. It’s an incredibly mature sentiment for someone who used to have such difficulty figuring out how to actually enjoy this holiday. (The song also includes one of the smartest, affecting melodies on the entire compilation when Stevens sings: “oh I can see the day when we’ll die/ but I don’t care to think of silence.”)

The album ends with “The Child With the Star on His Head,” a 15-minute epic that indicates that Stevens really has found some peace with Christmas. He finally seems able to harmonize his appreciation for the tradition (“the child with the star on his head”), with the secular spirit of holiday (“I am calling you close to my table, where I have made a us a feast”), with his acceptance of his inability to change the less savory commercialized aspects of Christmas (“in small ideas, in engineering, the world of sports and second best.”) He finishes the album by celebrating this epiphany with a ten-minute electronic noise jam, the same experimental soundscape that helped him reach his newfound understanding in the first place. To Christmas infinity and beyond.