New Sufjan Stevens EP available now

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Stream it all hear, or buy the MP3's

Sufjan Stevens

CD and LP later this year.

The EP, All Delighted People, is built around two different versions of Sufjan’s long-form epic ballad "All Delighted People," a dramatic homage to the Apocalypse, existential ennui, and Paul Simon’s "Sounds of Silence." Sounds delightful, yes! The song was originally workshopped (oh we hate making workshop a verb, but time is money!) on Sufjan’s previous tour in the fall of 2009. Other songs on the EP include the 17-minute guitar jam-for-single-mothers "Djohariah," and the gothic piano ballad "The Owl and the Tanager," a live-show mainstay (and Debbie Downer if you ask us; what’s it doing on a "Delighted" EP?). The full track list is available right here.

All Delighted People:

01 All Delighted People (Original Version)
02 Enchanting Ghost
03 Heirloom
04 From the Mouth of Gabriel
05 The Owl and the Tanager
06 All Delighted People (Classic Rock Version)
07 Arnika
08 Djohariah


Apparently it's 60 minutes as well. Nice.
 
Seemed nice, but not much memorable material on first listen for me. Anyone else check it out yet, what did you think?
 
Thanks! Does anyone know if All Delighted People (the song) played during the tour last year (apart from "workshopped")?
 
Seemed nice, but not much memorable material on first listen for me. Anyone else check it out yet, what did you think?

I pretty much felt the same way. I'm hoping it will grow on me, because I love me some soof
 
He played it at the Toronto show I saw

According to setlist.fm he played it in the show I saw last year. Not that I can remember, really. I seem to recall a very, very long new song, so it must have been this.

Anyways, there is some good stuff in the EP, but nothing that I found amazing. I need a few more listens before forming an opinion.
 
Pitchfork: Sufjan Announces New Album)

Sufjan Announces New Album


Front page photo by Denny Renshaw

Following (very) closely on the heels of last week's surprise All Delighted People EP comes news of a brand new Sufjan Stevens full-length. The Age of Adz will be released by Asthmatic Kitty on October 12. ("Adz" is pronounced "odds," a press release tells us.) More info here.

The Age of Adz:

01 Futile Devices
02 Too Much
03 Age of Adz
04 I Walked
05 Now That I'm Older
06 Get Real Get Right
07 Bad Communication
08 Vesuvius
09 All for Myself
10 I Want To Be Well
11 Impossible Soul

Posted by Amy Phillips on August 26, 2010 at 8:10 a.m.

Tags: Sufjan Stevens, New Releases,
 
Sheeeeeeeeesh! Lots of new Sujfan to become acquainted with before the concertings.

Ironically, this album will receive a physical release before the EP does.
 
I really like "Enchanting Ghost" and "Heirloom." They have the same rustic, somber feel as Seven Swans, which is my favorite Sufjan album.
 
I downloaded the EP last night and I liked it. I'll need to listen to it again to get a better feel for it. But there aren't many artists these days that release 60-minute EPs.
 
30udz4l.jpg
 
lolzorzz

This is pretty cool, actually.

Pitchfork: Listen: New Sufjan Stevens: "I Walked"

Certainly different for him.

unfortunatly i got distracted by the link to the walkmen doing driver 8 before the song could get more than a few seconds in, and i have a feeling that its craptastic suckitude this sufjan song could be the most amazingly pleasant thing my ears have ever heard but that cover spawned way too much hate for me to enjoy anything at the moment.
 
This thing has really grown on me, as most Sufjan albums do. All Delighted People (Original) is probably my favorite of the bunch.
 
Asthmatic Kitty is now taking pre-orders for The Age of Adz. If you pre-order, you get to download it two weeks in advance (on Sep. 28). Just one more week til we get a new Sufjan album.

Hi:

(A brief foreword: this is the only email you'll get from us. We have your email because you bought Sufjan Stevens' EP on Bandcamp. If you do like to hear more from us you can sign up for our email list here. Which we wish you would.)

Thanks for supporting us and Sufjan with your purchase of his EP All Delighted People. Please keep reading but to cut to the chase, you can preorder Sufjan Stevens' new full-length, The Age of Adz, from Bandcamp for $8 right here:
The Age of Adz | Sufjan Stevens

We love getting good music into your hands. We think it makes you happy, and that makes us happy. And that's why we're writing this email: to make everyone happy. It's admittedly a long email but we hope you'll stick with us for at least a little while because we want to explain something.

On October 12th we are proud to release Sufjan Stevens' first song-based full-length album in 5 years, The Age of Adz. We think it's one of the best things we've heard in a long time and we're hoping you'll buy it.

So. We have it on good authority that Amazon will be selling The Age of Adz for a very low price on release date, not unlike they did with Arcade Fire's recent (and really terrific) The Suburbs. We're not 100% sure Amazon will do this, but mostly sure.

We have mixed feelings about discounted pricing. Like we said, we love getting good music into the hands of good people, and when a price is low, more people buy. A low price will introduce a lot of people to Sufjan's music and to this wonderful album. For that, we're grateful.

But we also feel like the work that our artists produce is worth more than a cost of a latte. We value the skill, love, and time they've put into making their records. And we feel that our work too, in promotion and distribution, is also valuable and worthwhile.

That's why we personally feel that physical products like EPs should sell for around $7 and full-length CDs for around $10-12 We think digital EPs should sell for around $5 and full-length digital albums for something like $8.

So you might wonder why we'd "allow" Amazon to sell it for lower than that.

There are several reasons why, but mostly? It's because we believe in you. We trust you and in your ability to make your own choice. Here are some you might make if you decide to obtain the album:
You can preorder the physical CD and LP. We are currently taking preorders on both, selling them for $12+S&H and $20+S&H respectively. Those who preorder will get a digital download of the album 2 weeks early on September 28th. You can do that here:
https://www.scdistribution.com/sufjan/
You can preorder the digital album via Bandcamp, starting right now. The cost of the preorder is $8. As a sign of thanks, those who preorder will also receive their download two weeks early on September 28th. (This offer ends September 27th at 11pm EST.) Do that here:
The Age of Adz | Sufjan Stevens
You can mosey on down to your local independent record store and preorder or buy it there.
You can wait for whatever pricing may or may not occur on the big broad Internet on release day.
Finally, you could just download the album after it leaks without paying a dime from any number of sources on the internet. (We'd rather you not.)
So that's you.

A bit about us.

We are very much like Bandcamp. We are similarly sized companies (under 10 employees!). Both of us are dwarfed by companies doing the same thing but with seemingly limitless amounts of resources. Our dealings with Bandcamp have been honest and that's a rare find. And like us, they believe artists and musicians should get what's due them. Like us, they believe in the shiny ideal that someone can still possibly maybe perhaps surely make a decent living singing and writing and playing their best. We think that they also think that good music is worth something. This all while the internet swirls with bittorrents and rapidshares and full-album-mp3-blogs and heavily discounted pricing. So this is us, both out here on the raggedy edge.

And honestly, we like it here.

In fact, there are lots of us out there, doing what we do because we love to do it and hoping somebody pays us long enough to keep doing it a little while longer.

So we hope you'll be that somebody that keeps paying us a little while longer, in whatever way you think most appropriate.

Thanks for reading and being such a great bunch of people.

Love,
Asthmatic Kitty Records

P.S. The new Half-handed Cloud album comes out next week. It's very good. You can stream it for free and preorder it on Bandcamp here:
Half-handed Cloud
 
The whole deal of asking fans to not buy from Amazon is absolutely idiotic. Asthmatic Kitty (not surprisingly) must have worked out a horrible deal with retailers, as the amount a retailer is charging shouldn't affect their own profits in the least. Complaining that only location is selling something for a price that will actually HELP get more physical copies out the door seems absolutely ridiculous in this day and age. The price there is presently $14, so I'm not entirely sure what they're complaining about at this point, I assume they are alluding that Amazon will be lowering the price to around $7.99.

Regardless, the ability to have the album 2 weeks earlier in digital form is tempting, but is it worth twice the price of buying it on Amazon ($12 + shipping and handling from the label for the CD)? Hell no.
 
Not to mention that if I were one of their vendors, I'd be pretty pissed if I saw this. I'm sure Amazon is big enough to not give a shit and I'm not sure exactly how it works, but if I gave them money for x units wholesale, then found out they were telling people not to buy them at retail from me, I doubt I'd do business with them again. Seems a little unethical
 
I was also a bit annoyed by this - just sell it for a price that is profitable enough for them and let other retailers choose how much profit they want to make.

Also, to be overly selective about where people actually buy their music in these days of free downloads seems very disconnected from reality.
 

Royal Robertson cover art! Dude was fascinatingly nuts... and occasionally put out some riveting art.

After only one listen of this ep, I see a lot of potential for growth. It sounds like he picked up with the psychedelic stuff he had going with "Ring Them Bells" on I'm Not There. I must say that the vocals bothered me some the first time through, so much so that I wondered if it wasn't Sufjan singing.
 
The vocals are goofy on the title track, sure, but it's a great tune and his new singing style is pretty damn interesting. The way the choir nails some of those vocals (you know, the "our transgre-eh-eh-eh-eh-sions" sounding ones) murders me. I also can't get enough of the "I love you a lot, I love you from the top of my heart" lines. They're exquisite. What a song. Other than that, the rest of the EP has some typically Suffy vocals. "Heirloom" is as good as its Sparse-jan Stevens predecessors like the immortal "Casimir Pulaski Day."
 
New album is streamable at NPR.

I'll probably wait until it's released, but I look forward to impressions to help me decide if I should pre-order it from Amazon or not. :wink:
 
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