Staff Reviews

Sufjan Stevens - Silver & Gold

Review by Marc Burrows

This is a collection of songs you’re only going to listen to once a year, and nothing here is going to enter the mass-consciousness of the Christmas canon. It’s very odd, varies wildly in tone and has its fair share of clunky bits, but it’s all done in the spirit of fun and is always endearingly sincere.»

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limited 6 lp box set. asthmatic kitty records release (another!) christmas box-set extravaganza by the implacable singer / songwriter sufjan stevens - 'silver and gold: songs for christmas, vols. 6-10', a compilation of 5 eps recorded between 2006 and 2010. expanding on the tradition of the first box-set (songs for christmas, vols. 1-5 from 2006), 'silver and gold' is a generous document of five more years of holly-jolly jubilee - christmas caroling, sleigh-bell-ringing, collaborative songwriting - undertaken by sufjan and his various musical cohorts. originally intended as gifts for family and friends, these musical snapshots have been re-mixed and re-assembled for the public in an exquisitely-designed gift box containing all the yuletide pleasures money can buy: christmas stickers, temporary tattoos, lyric sheets and chord charts, a paper ornament, a 40-page christmas songbook with vocal and piano reductions, a christmas colouring book, hallucinogenic photographs and psychedelic graphic design, extensive liner notes - a veritable christmas feast for the eyes and ears. the album features collaborations with a running line-up of friends and musical peers, including aaron and bryce dessner (the national), richard reed parry (arcade fire), dm stith (the revival hour, asthmatic kitty recording artist), cat martino (sufjan's right-hand woman on all things age of adz), sebastian krueger (inlets), gabriel kahane, vesper stamper, and members of danielson (daniel, elin, lilly, and ida).
description from www.roughtrade.com