“When I die, I’ll rot/But when I live, I’ll give it all I got”. So sings Sufjan Stevens on the title track to his sprawling new album, The Age Of Adz, and the guy really isn’t kiddin.

He certainly throws everything he has into this new work, a sometimes-towering, sometimes-maddening, impossible-to-ignore album designed to remind us why Stevens is such a singular talent whose presence on the music scene was greatly missed.

Clearly he hasn’t been idling away during the five years since the release of Illinois, the second of his statewide album-trot across America that apparently has now been abandoned. Just a month or so ago he popped out of nowhere with an “EP” that had 60 minutes worth of brand new stuff on it. The Age Of Adz clocks in at well over an hour as well, with 25 minutes of that coming in the multi-part closing track, “Impossible Soul”.

It’s also clear that Sufjan has become enthralled with new sounds during his hiatus. Gone are the light, fluttery, horns-and-banjo soundscapes of his previous work. This stuff is unwaveringly dense, filled with all kinds of electronics, clattering industrial beats, what sounds like an ondes martenot (Radiohead’s instrument of choice on Kid A), and even some Autotune. This is Stevens on steroids.

And yet it’s not all that dissimilar to what he has brought us before. The melodies are undeniable, and the way he repeats them throughout the long songs makes them sound like mantras. Take the title track, which begins with a mad-scientist groove set amidst a maniacal cacophony. But as each individual part is stripped away, you’re left with Stevens’ delicate voice and fragile tune, and it’s quite a pretty tune at that.

That musical pattern of clarity amidst the clutter is repeated throughout. “Too Much” has an electromagnetic pulse of a beat and some crazed, wailing backing vocals, but the airy melody still finds a way to rear its head. “I Walked” is a tale of romantic estrangement set to a computerized beat and synthesizer squiggles, but again, the songwriting is never obscured by the excess.

This is also a much feistier Sufjan Stevens than we’ve seen in the past. One of the most memorable moments on the album comes in “I Want To Be Well”, when things build up to a frenzied crescendo as Stevens sings over and over, “I’m not f---in’ around”, as if anyone doubted his seriousness. The harder edges of the rhythms and beats allow for less preciousness, and that’s a positive.

The negative is that Stevens’ still needs an editor. Even Illinois, which is one of my favorite albums of the last decade, has long stretches that don’t really add much to the overall picture. The Age Of Adz falters in its middle section, where a stretch of songs go off on portentous, religious tangents that fail to hit home with the immediacy of the more personal songs.

And that aforementioned preciousness comes to the fore when Stevens addresses himself in “Vesuvius”: “Sufjan, follow the path/It leads to an article of eminent death”. Say what.

Looking too long for meaning in any of these songs might be a futile exercise. At times The Age Of Adz seems like a breakup album, and then just as quickly it transforms into what seems like an alien’s missive to Earth. It all wraps up in “Impossible Soul”, which boasts five different sections that run from a ponderous New Agey drone to some thrilling proto-disco.

That last part of the song contains some exuberant vocals chanting a refrain (“It’s not so impossible”) that contradicts the somewhat ominous tone that pervades the album.

For all of the new trappings, The Age Of Adz is actually of a piece with the state albums, in that it’s way too long, goes wandering off into territories where it loses its footing, but it regains that footing in stirring ways that make it worth all the trouble.

Simply put, it’s real good to have Sufjan Stevens back.

SAMPLE THE AGE OF ADZ

"The Age of Adz"

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"I Walked"

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"I Want to Be Well"

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