Hear Me Out: "No Shade in the Shadow of the Cross"

Sufjan Stevens is one of the great signs of contradiction in modern popular music, managing to be both the bleeding edge of folk music and a wild reactionary. His latest single, “No Shade in the Shadow of the Cross,” off his upcoming album “Carrie & Lowell,” drives this point home like no other song he has recorded so far. Violently Christian and filled with Millenial obscenity, the song straddles apparently contradictory worlds, inhabiting a deeply melancholy and liminal space of its own.

Delicate, unaccompanied acoustic guitar lilts rather than twangs as it did in much of his previous acoustic work (such as that on “Seven Swans” and “All Delighted People EP”). This suits the starkness of the lyrics, which are austere in a way that eclipses his previous morose songs (e.g. “Casimir Pulaski Day” and “Enchanting Ghost”), which have always had a touch of expansiveness. The imagery is tight, almost obsessive: “There's blood on that blade / Fuck me, I'm falling apart / My assassin, like Casper the ghost / There's no shade in the shadow of the cross.” The close tie between erotic and religious imagery and the plaintive, uncompromising summary would make a John Donne or San Juan de la Cruz proud. Stevens has outdone himself as a poet and set a difficult standard to meet on the rest of the his new album.

The strangest aspect of “No Shade” is the apparent earnestness and lack of irony in its lyrics. As far as one can tell, this is a genuine spiritual with a literal, true-blue Jesus obsession. The fact that it was released right before the start of Lent underlines this bizarre anachronism. Most critics have ignored or explained away Stevens’s Christianity; while it remains to be seen if the rest of “Carrie & Lowell” will cultivate this strain, this single makes it significantly more difficult to dismiss this Christian imagery as a mere device.