The Bizarre Disembodiment of ‘Aporia’

If ever there was a musician for the manic pixie dream girls and boys of the 21st century, Sufjan Stevens would be it — or at least he would’ve been, before his latest album, “Aporia.”

Stevens is a staple of the alternative music scene, though his particular brand verges less on the indie-pop funk of Cage The Elephant and Vampire Weekend and more on the folksy, acoustic vibes of Fleet Foxes and The Paper Kites. He earned his place in the indie folk hall of fame in the early aughts, when he helped to pioneer a genre movement largely characterized by monotone vocals, near-indistinguishable chord changes, and slow, languid strums of an unplugged guitar.

He has remained relevant over the years because his sound is so distinctive. There are certain staples to a Sufjan Stevens song, or at least there were: raspy vocals, the occasional odd, disjointed-yet-brilliant saxophone or oboe solo; a banjo so tickled that one can physically see fingers flicking between the strings.

His is music meant for long road trips through dusty stretches of California in vintage convertibles, sun-soaked porches in the American South, and fair-trade coffee shops in Brooklyn. Stevens occupies, and is a metaphor for, a singularly unique niche in American alternative culture. Slow down, says his music. Stay a while; daydream.

This is not the message his latest album, “Aporia,” released on March 24, conveys.

Perhaps because Stevens is, like many of his fellow indie artists, prone to experimentation, his albums are largely hit-and-miss. Some of his strokes of brilliance include “Seven Swans” (2004), “Illinois” (2005), and “Carrie & Lowell” (2015). In 2017, he released several songs featured in the smash-hit indie film “Call Me By Your Name,” including “Mystery of Love,” which portrays the stomach-swooping sensation of a first love with immaculate clarity.

This said, Stevens had released 16 unique albums since 2002 before “Aporia,” and many have — at least comparatively — flopped, at least in terms of listeners. Take, for example, the long-forgotten Christmas album, entitled “Songs for Christmas,” which features a whopping 42 songs on its discography.

“Aporia” is a collaborative effort with the artist Lowell Brams, who is also Stevens’s stepfather, which may contribute to its divergence from Stevens’s traditional path. Brams is an artist who works largely in the field of instrumental synth, and his only previous release was an album entitled “Library Catalogue Music Series: Music for Insomnia” in 2009.

True to form, “Aporia” is an instrumental album, and the best way to describe it is as simply strange. There is no acoustic strumming to be found on “Aporia.” Nor are there mildly-graphic lyrics about destructive love and trauma (disguised, of course, by a friendly, quiet guitar). “Aporia” is more new-age noise than it is indie, a collection of artificial sounds that teeter precariously toward ominous, and therefore toward unenjoyable.

Listening to “Aporia,” one cannot help but notice the ghosts in the room — other indie bands that stumbled down the path of noise, taunted by experimentation and the bizarre. Take Lou Reed, for instance, who released a solo album called “Metal Machine Music” in 1979, which is exactly what it sounds like: four 15-minute songs of screeching metal.

For what it is, “Aporia” is not bad, exactly. Here, perhaps, is where Stevens and Brams and Reed diverge into two separate camps: “Metal Machine Music” was bad noise. “Aporia” is comparatively good noise, if ever there existed such a thing. As an album, however, it is not particularly fun to listen to, which is arguably at the heart of music’s function in society. Listening to “Aporia,” one has the feeling that its songs belong on the score of “Stranger Things” or “Chernobyl,” not the independent album of an indie music icon.

There are some standaway songs that are genuinely enjoyable in their own ways — “Eudaimonia,” the penultimate track, is one; “Ataraxia” is another. There are, however, also tracks that are truly jarring, like “For Raymond Scott,” presumably named for the inventor of electric instruments, which is 34 seconds of unadulterated dissonance.

As an art form and part of the noise genre, “Aporia” mostly succeeds in what it sets out to do. What it lacks, though — and what few noise albums actually accomplish — is a tangible connection with the audience. There is no stirring of emotion; no compulsion to keep listening, and listening, and listening. It lacks a fundamental resonance in a disembodied, soulless way.

“Aporia” thus follows in the footsteps of many of Stevens’s albums, which are never of poor quality, per se. The album simply lacks depth. Rather than eliciting a negative response, it is much more likely not to receive any at all.

— Staff writer Emerson J. Monks can be reached at emerson.monks@thecrimson.com.