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Sufjan Stevens: The Ascension | Review - Pitchfork

Sufjan Stevens: The Ascension | Review - Pitchfork

Sufjan Stevens: The Ascension | Review - Pitchfork
Sep 25, 2020 1 min, 28 secs

Exhaustive, dense, and detailed, Sufjan Stevens’ electro-opus is another huge artistic leap that speaks plainly to complicated emotions and attempts to rebuild his sound from the ground up.

The title track on The Ascension is one of the best songs Sufjan Stevens has ever written.

“To think I was acting like a believer,” he sings in his feathery, heartbroken way, “when I was just angry and depressed.” It is the only song on the album that fits squarely into his comfort zone, where questions of life and death feel as intimate as the words to a love song.

Along the way, there are slow jams and dancefloor singalongs, a panic attack set to creeping industrial music and what sounds like Stevens’ score for a campy ’80s horror movie.

From his 2005 breakthrough Illinois to his last proper solo album, 2015’s grief-stricken Carrie & Lowell, Stevens has always worked best when he immerses himself in his subjects, encouraging the same devotion from listeners.

The majority of the album was recorded with a drum machine and several Prophet synthesizers while Stevens’ more characteristic equipment—acoustic guitars and banjos—were in storage during a move.

The whole thing works best when you approach it like a big-budget IMAX movie set in space with a great leading actor: Don’t get too hung up on the plot—just tilt back your head and watch him float.

“Every song title on the album is a cliche,” he admitted to The Quietus.

He finds momentum in the bittersweet “Goodbye to All That,” returning to one his most familiar settings: on the road, despondent, “hopelessness incorporated.” And just before the sweeping curtain call of “America,” there’s the title track—the point when Stevens accepts his strengths and speaks to the moment.

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