The Singles Jukebox

Well, look, it was either this or something off the Michael Bublé record.

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Patrick St. Michel: In which Sufjan Stevens uses a song originally sung by a banjo-playing snowman in a Rankin/Bass special as a jumping off point to record something that would have worked wonders in a more cynical version of A Charlie Brown Christmas, one where Charlie Brown only grows more depressed once he dwells on his own mortality. This doesn’t sound particularly Christmas-y — it could have appeared on any Sufjan Stevens album, not just a gimmicky holiday one — but it does sound lovely and pained, which is one of Stevens’ strongest skills as an artist.
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Anthony Easton: I know people find this moving, but it does a disservice to genuine religious thinkers when this sort of pseudo-profound navel gazing is mistaken for some kind of philosophy. It’s eschatology is solipsistic.
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Zach Lyon: Never let anyone convince you that Mr. Stevens cares more about execution than he does thesis. Sometimes the thesis isn’t self-important enough to ruin the song (2004’s Seven Swans was the best record he’s put together for all the reasons this one isn’t) and sometimes it’s all he has. The thesis here is “I can totally mine this Rankin-Bass/Burl Ives classic for free philosophical points by putting my Sufjan-O-Matic twist on it! I’ll even rename with a title that will never, ever get it mistaken for a Rankin-Bass song, just to get the point across extra super duper well.” In execution, if Liam Lynch could time travel from 2002 and start his career fresh in 2012, “Fake Sufjan Stevens Song” is right here for the taking.
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Ian Mathers: I have my issues with Sufjan, but I can’t deny most of his songs in this mode have a certain baseline wispy prettiness that can be easy to like. Unfortunately, with faux profundities like “how can you measure its worth?” and not much else going on, that’s about all “Justice Delivers Its Death” has going for it.
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Iain Mew: I loved Illinois, but after trying Michigan and discovering just how similar it was, I felt like I had little need to go on to anything else Sufjan did. Seven years and… no more states later, “Justice Delivers Its Death” is pretty but still offers nothing new to be anything more. 
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Alfred Soto: For melancholic shimmer, we can do worse, but there’s no reason why anyone over nineteen should bother.
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W.B. Swygart: He sings really pretty, he plays really nice, but the musings are so leaden they put scales back on my eyes.
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Alex Ostroff: In freshman year of university I adored Illinois, but as time passed its anodyne prettiness and meticulous composition felt less moving than they did competent and vaguely reflective. Sufjan’s follow-up was surprisingly visceral and comparatively dissonant, catching me off-guard with how much I enjoyed it. And yet on tour in Montreal much of the audience was visibly put off by the sonic experimentation and backup dancers, and spent the show waiting, exhaling only when Sufjan played “John Wayne Gacy Jr.” during the encore. They, presumably, will be very happy to hear this. I’m mostly bored.
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Jonathan Bradley: Sufjan Stevens has a talent for making gentle or pretty songs into something more than wallpaper; he’s wont to let deep sadness linger in the emptiness hovering round the edges of his hushed tones and carefully plucked arpeggios. “Justice Delivers Its Death” is reminiscent of “John Wayne Gacy, Jr.” and parts of “Vesuvius,” and shares those tunes’ sombre ache. Unlike those, it doesn’t sound as though the words might conceal deeper tragedy beneath the surface. These theological musings bend toward a liturgical vacuity.
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Will Adams: I’ve never felt compelled to listen to fifty Sufjan Steven songs in one sitting, even though many of them are 40 seconds long. In isolation, though, I’m reminded how beautiful his music can be. “Justice Delivers Its Death” layers its guitars to make them sound as if they’re echoing off each other, adding a gorgeous shimmer. Add in the delicate piano and I’m sold. That is, until Sufjan’s voice gets in the way.
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Katherine St Asaph: This isn’t just pretty, it’s postcard-gorgeous; little flecks of piano and guitar swirling about like a snowflake-tinsel blizzard, vocal processing like rushing wind. And sure, the biblical metaphors grinch their way in and Sufjan eventually starts thinking he’s a tenor, but holidays usually wear out their welcome pretty quick.
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Brad Shoup: Though of course Stevens is thinking along Solomonic lines, I can’t help but read a metatext about the music industry. “I’m getting old,” he mutters, and while he’s a mere 37, the people cropping up in year-end lists are largely quite a bit younger. It suits the business model: musicians in their 20s are more likely to have the stamina to embark on grueling, entry-level tours; the facility with new social/creative technology to push music in different directions; and the free time and inherited/borrowed capital to create art without having to hold down a 9-to-5. And as a corollary to that last part, they’re also more likely to think of silver and gold as a welcome possibility, rather than the fuel of Western existence. I spent last week on Spotify, creating playlists of world folk divided by region, and imagining the cruel justice of filesharing ruining the modern record label. What do our songs become? And our musicians? For millennia, music bound communities — not just demographically-aligned segments, but actual towns and tribes — giving them themes for events daily and annual, soundtracking worship and instilling identity. While manic, Stevens’ Christmas output can be viewed as an effort to plug into bygone days of culture (and its thorny successor, the monoculture). “Justice Delivers Its Death” draws power from the source text’s origin in the monoculture, even as he converts it to a jeremiad. It’s beautiful, stark in his usual mold, and more than a bit obvious in its complaints. But harvest time comes every year, and still we would sing the same reaping songs.
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