As ever, woods’ raps are stuffed with an overwhelmingly colorful blur of wordplay: “From up here the lakes is puddles,” he observes at cruising altitude, “the land unfold brown and green, it’s a quiet puzzle.” His words on NYC are so alive that you can practically smell the conch fritters frying up in the pan, taste the tang of city tap water, and see him breathlessly chasing down a Brooklyn bus.

On the brilliantly bleak travelogue Maps, New York’s indie-rap maverick billy woods floats around like a ghost-from the Netherlands to a Costco in the Midwest, from the backseat of a $300 Uber ride to outside Kennedy Fried Chicken-blowing dope and waiting until it’s time for his next gig. The rapper lifestyle has rarely sounded so unglamorous. Stevens is a ruthless optimist still marveling at the opportunity to live at all diagnosed with the debilitating Guillain-Barré syndrome, he regards caregivers helping him relearn how to walk as “ love in action.” His gratitude is infectious, especially from within grief. “Now punish me.” But he won’t let the heaviness of his admissions crush him. “I’m drowning in my self-defense,” he sings. On opener “Goodbye Evergreen,” Stevens confronts the instinct to repress grief by bringing his favorite blurred line into focus-is this song about God or a queer partner? He falls to his knees from the weight of a broken heart, pleading for the solace of his past while trying to trust in what the future might bring. Dedicated to his late partner, the album is a humble maturation that pulls together Stevens’ career trademarks in one sweeping motion: the lush folk arrangements of Illinois, the heavenly vocal harmonies of All Delighted People, the electronic grandiosity of The Age of Adz.

The specific kind of intimacy Sufjan Stevens summons on Javelin is less about big questions or small details, but rather the act of pouring your heart into a vase that’s already cracking.

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