The lyrical imagery is often more mythic than narrative or visual, in line with Sufjan’s well-documented religious and spiritual concerns. The chorus of “It’s Your Own Body and Mind” nods to Spike Lee’s debut She’s Gotta Have It, but could just as easily be a generic turn of phrase. Thanks to their gently intertwined voices, most name-drops or direct references, like the shout-out to stop-motion animator Ray Harryhausen on “Olympus,” don’t feel forced. Like the bromantic surfers Johnny Utah and Bodhi in Point Break, the film that sparked the title track, Sufjan and Angelo are riders on the storm, circling each other in search of a unified wave.
Not every title cited finds its way into the lyrics directly some serve more as guiding stars. Several songs draw from certified Criterion classics like Wings of Desire (“Reach Out”) and All About Eve (“Lady Macbeth in Chains”), but Sufjan notes in an interview that the duo were specifically drawn to titles that are in some way “problematic,” whether maligned sequels like Bring It On Again (“Fictional California”), discarded genre movies like Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth (“The Pillar of Souls”) or films that have become a magnet for criticism like The Silence of the Lambs (“Cimmerian Shade”). Instead, they view film almost through the lens of the original Surrealists, who would go to the theater not to watch a complete film, but to catch bits and pieces of multiple movies, absorbing an out-of-context stream of images rather than a coherent plot. A Beginner’s Mind, the new collaboration from Sufjan Stevens and songwriter Angelo De Augustine, takes a substantively different approach: There’s no unifying concept beyond the pair’s omnivorous channel-surfing, and they don’t attempt an overtly cinematic musical style.
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