The Daily Spin II

Sufjan Stevens | Seven Swans

Welcome back to the Daily Spin. For the uninitiated, this is the series in which I review an album every day of 2025.

As was the case two years ago, my favorite song from each album can be found at the playlist linked here.

Album: Seven Swans (2004)

Artist: Sufjan Stevens

Link:

I’ll always appreciate Sufjan Stevens - even if he doesn’t necessarily seem like he’s about to deliver the other 48 state albums I’ve been eagerly awaiting. He’s an artist with such a knack for storytelling that his sparse arrangements rarely ever lack - if anything, they’re an example of doing more with less.

Seven Swans has intrigued me for some time because it’s so explicitly reckoning with faith - not that that’s particularly unique, but it’s always something I look towards with intrigue as someone who’s done plenty of that myself.

I really love the arrangements here, led primarily by a banjo. It’s so down-to-earth, so personal, that you can’t help but feel captured by it all. I won’t lie and say that I’m in love with the oft-overtly Christian nature of the sound here, but there’s something really endearing about the way Stevens himself is captivated by it all.

The brief infusions of non-acoustic sound really stick out here - it’s a brilliant mechanical choice, to let them settle in for only a moment as accent pieces - but the best is, as per usual, those moments where you find yourself in the eye of the hurricane staring up at a cloudless sky, drinking the sound in.

Rating: 8/10

Best Tracks: To Be Alone With You

Worst Tracks: Sister