The Age of Adz by Sufjan Stevens

The Age of Adz, released on October 12, 2010 on Asthmatic Kitty, the label Sufjan Stevens co-founded with his stepfather, is the sound of the hushed folk guy plugging everything into the wall. His first song-based full-length since Illinois five years earlier, it trades that record's characters and places for glitching electronics, swollen orchestration and songs about his own nerves and heart.

Stevens produced it himself, and he took his visual cue from the apocalyptic artwork of Royal Robertson, a schizophrenic artist. It's a jolt next to Seven Swans and Michigan, though anyone who had heard Enjoy Your Rabbit knew he had a thing for machines. "I Walked" stumbles forward over skittering beats, and "Impossible Soul" reaches for something far bigger. Critics loved the intimacy and argued about the swerve, but it still landed on best-of-2010 lists at Paste, The New York Times and MTV, and it climbed to number seven on the Billboard 200, his highest showing yet.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.