Indie-folk pioneer Sufjan Stevens has shared his latest single “Will Anybody Ever Love Me?” and unveiled an accompanying music video in anticipation of his forthcoming album, Javelin.
For both this newest track and the album’s lead single “So You Are Tired” Stevens took a different approach to both his songwriting and recording, with the multi-instrumentalist taking the reins and playing every instrument heard throughout the songs. “Will Anybody Ever Love Me?” feels like a matured Sufjan Stevens, drawing from his early acoustic intimacy and his more recent electronic grandeur as the track climbs from a roundabout of solo strings into an echoing choir of vocals, drum snaps, and guitars.
Meanwhile, the ancillary music video takes listeners on a peacefully psychedelic jaunt, breezing through sunny fields of wheat, fern covered forests, rocky cliffs, and grassy plains before skewing into an untextured virtual environment. Prisms of both Stevens and the song’s three background singers — Adrienne Maree Brown, Hannah Cohen, and Megan Lui — rise off the ground and explode out into the world. Viewers revisit the once peaceful landscapes, only now they are taken over with faces, scrapbook style photos of people covering the world as they collide into a kaleidoscopic tunnel at the edge of space. The short film compliments the pained splendor of the track itself, showing how a beautiful place can be tainted by a bad memory of someone you once loved, or how it can be adored because of someone you do love. Sufjan asks a blunt question that everyone has thought to themselves at some point in life: “Will anybody ever love me? / For good reasons / Without grievance, not for sport / Will anybody ever love me?”
Independent record stores will be hosting Javelin listening parties on October 3rd throughout North America in celebration of the new LP. Participating stores and times are included below, and the events are free to attend. Each store will have wristbands for pickup in advance to reserve a spot, and the first 30 attendees at each store will leave with an exclusive poster with art from the making of Javelin.
Watch the music video for “Will Anybody Ever Love Me?” below and check out the full list of listening party participants below.