Oh, we throw shade alright…
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[4.88]
Luisa Lopez: What the beautiful “Chicago” did with such extraordinary skill was weigh the mournfulness Sufjan excels at in historic hands, situating it in the time and space of many things — hope, loneliness, despair. “No Shade in the Shadow of Cross” is unlucky enough to be the length of a sigh or a nap. It sounds like one too, though saved by brief moments of exquisite mourning, those oohs wafting through the woods like the lullabies of ghosts.
[5]
Brad Shoup: The cyclical composition style and prepackaged aura and emotional stigmata are back. What’s new, or at least different, is the wear. He was purely doleful, and now he sounds tired. Of course, that could just be an affect — all apologies, considering the subject matter, but the language of addiction and debauchery eludes him here. Images t-bone each other; when he gets blunt, there’s only the urge to startle. His current addiction is recording songs, and I imagine the repeating, refracting acoustic progression does more to exorcise than any confession.
[5]
Cédric Le Merrer: Almost like one of those secretly about vampires songs by Stephin Merritt, only 100% unironic. I’m told the audible air conditioning is not a clever send off of its own tweeness but a sincere *authenticity* signifier. I’m likely to hear any song with the faint sound of a computer fan in the background anyway, so all my listening is super authentic already and I don’t need to hear this.
[3]
Micha Cavaseno: Apparently when you drain the Broadway Musical style budget of fanfare from son’s music, you end up with a few crumbs of songwriting and some canned muzak from the Hallmark store ‘trickling’ in the background.
[2]
Alfred Soto: Well, it’s breathy. Sincere too. Not purty, though, and because Stevens has a Winnie the Pooh voice he needs to write tougher melodies and words if he doesn’t want me to think Heffalumps and Woozles are the worst things he has to worry about.
[4]
Katherine St Asaph: Or depth in the shadow of a song.
[4]
Ashley Ellerson: Allusions to Jesus and life’s vices in the same song? Sufjan’s not afraid to get real about his faith and worldly experiences. Losing someone is hard regardless of circumstances, and what we humans do to cope goes from healthy and healing to borderline masochistic at times because we desire feeling something. This is lonely, heartbreaking, and soothing in under three minutes. Even the shadow of the cross can’t protect us from pain.
[9]
Anthony Easton: The tension between what Sufjan hides (just come out already) and what he makes explicit (his relationship with Christ) has this tenuous, encoded quality, but one betrayed when he just comes out and says exactly what he means (that line about being fucked up and falling apart). Like all good queer Anglo-Catholics, I fall in love with shy choristers despite myself.
[7]