Stephen Thomas Erlewine vs. Sufjan Stevens

STE is the god of allmusic dot com. He's written the most important reviews of the most important albums and he's written them well. And now he's written an essay dissing Sufjan Stevens, whence:

His pretension — his convoluted song titles, his cloying song about Saul Bellow, his adolescent fascination with John Wayne Gacy, Jr. — all comes across like a precocious high school student in his senior year, where he's smug enough to want to prove that he's smarter than the rest of the school. Appropriately, his lyrics often read like the work of a gifted but sheltered high schooler, and his music sounds like a drama student's idea of a pop opera — and it's all wrapped up on albums with stylized childish artwork, hand-drawn pictures that inadvertently wind up enforcing the impression that Stevens is an overgrown teenager.

So I'm taking STE's thesis as being that SS is more clever than good. I don't really have an opinion on this, because I haven't listened to SS. I do note, though, that the man named an album Sufjan Stevens Invites You to Come on Feel the Illinoise.

Ok, and I'd also note that STE references Jim O'Rourke. And Jim O'Rourke is awesome!