Javelin

Sufjan Stevens assembled Javelin from close acoustic writing, layered voices and electronic detail. Much of the record begins on a small scale, with a guitar or keyboard figure near the vocal, before the arrangements open into more densely populated passages.

“Will Anybody Ever Love Me?” makes that movement particularly clear, building a direct question into a communal-sounding refrain. “Shit Talk” extends the same tension over a longer form. The closing Neil Young song “There's a World” brings the sequence back toward quiet, leaving room after the record's larger emotional peaks.