I must admit I’ve fallen off listening to Sufjan Stevens in the last few years.

Not since Carrie & Lowell (2015) and his work on the Call Me By Your Name (2017) soundtrack have I been enchanted by the resident king of indie music. 

But something about Javelin, his new release dropped days ago, stuck with me since my first listen. It’s beautiful and deeply intimate, like much of his work – yet it reaches a new depth, tapping into a recent loss and sense of longing his music often returns to.

I could listen to “Goodbye Evergreen” a thousand times and still feel the twinge in my heart when he sings the lines, “Think of me as you will/ I grow like a cancer.” It’s just one of many gut-punches in the second verse:

Something just isn't right
I cut from the inside
I'm frightened of the end
I'm drowning in my self-defense
Now punish me
Think of me as what you will
I grow like a cancer
I'm pressed out in thе rain
Deliver me from thе poisoned pain

To call something evergreen is a high compliment. Forever fresh. Relevant. Present.

How can you say goodbye to something everlasting? Technically it’s only an adjective for the living. As long as something is living it can be evergreen. So it’s tough to hear him say goodbye to something, someone, so special.

An interpretation clearly colored by Sufjan’s ultimate coming out in an Instagram post about his late lover, how humbly this new release asks us to deliver him from the pain of this recent loss.

This album starts with a goodbye. And the phases of that declaration continue with each song where we wrestle with the stages of his grief and acceptance. 

In “A Running Start” he begs, “Don’t go, my lovely pantomime.” In “Will Anybody Ever Love Me?” he asks, “Chase away my heart and heartache […] watch me drift and watch me struggle, let me go.” And in “Shit Talk” the battle continues, “No more fighting, I’ve nothing left to give” […]:

I will always love you
But I cannot look at you
Hold me closely
Hold me tightly lest I fall
No, I don’t want to fight at all

Though the songs packed with more overt Christian allusions may lose some listeners, those who have experienced love and loss may find comfort in the shared experience of his mourning.

It’s an ultimate album of reverence for his partner, fighting his faith with grace along the way: “Everything heaven sent/Must burn out in the end.”