Sufjan Stevens - The Ascension
Written by Nathan Evans
A bit of pre-emptive gushing before we start - no-one can do what Sufjan Stevens can do. A vision that scales pastures that others can’t even see, and a voice that could convince OJ Simpson into handcuffs, Stevens has achieved art-folk deity status to a lot of people. His core studio albums are indie music’s best answer to “event albums”, only coming around every 5 years since 2005, but this is often the culmination of his tinkering, hit-or-miss side projects. Since his last mainline record, 2015’s Carrie & Lowell, we’ve had the joy of him performing at the Oscars for his contribution to Call Me By Your Name (and the despair of him being robbed to goddamn Coco), but also some overblown concept-core (Planetarium) and an anodyne if sweet-intentioned new age record with his stepfather (Aporia). The Ascension is the new manifesto, a different era to witness that pivots off these peripherals.
Immediately, comparisons can be made to 10-year-old The Age of Adz, being a heavily electronic songbook rather than wielding gargantuan orchestration (2005’s Illinois) or diaphanous home-recording atmospheres (Carrie & Lowell). However this time, Stevens shapes the record with less extroversion, adopting the soft edges of folktronica, as well as eerily simple, pop-timistic hooks. The man they call Subaru has never been one someone who begrudges a sticky hook, but here the motifs are far less intricate and perhaps less memorable for it. It certainly feels like a loss of that signature quill on tracks like ‘Sugar’, which almost feels as though he’s shooting for the top-40, though in the album context, it’s a welcome respite from the mechanised oddities.
Stevens pulls more from microhouse this time, a genre that’s built on subtle soundscapes with a few electronic scratches and blemishes, whisking the listener away with a stark canvas for emotion to be summoned over to. That organic thread suits Sufjan incredibly well, particularly in the chiming key chords that permeate the core of several landmarks here (‘Video Game’, ‘Ursa Major’, ‘Gilgamesh’). The sensitive persuasion of these keys justify the new sound almost alone, and the synthetic brushstrokes contrast divinely with the otherwise pastel tones.
The LP commences with ‘Make Me an Offer I Cannot Refuse’, and is, simply put, one of the most choppily-written tracks Sufjan has ever made. Aimless and malnourished, the hook becomes excruciating by the time it’s finally terminated, thankfully redeemed straight after with the tranquil ballad ‘Run Away With Me’. Here is where he starts to exercise the album’s palette to effect - dulcet keyboard drones, a quietly stammering Meccano drum beat, and an effortless song about love in the face of everything surrounding Stevens. Though the record looks to be a lukewarm mixed bag by this point, rest assured The Ascension smooths out, with only the odd underwhelming moment.
Intermittently, Stevens likes to employ a style of vocal applique onto songs, cutting the edges of a bin bag of samples and throwing them together to make oddly rhythmic spikes. ‘Lamentations’ is the first sight of this trait, and subtly, it hints at what 2-step producer Todd Edwards made his name on, or what made Solange’s ‘Losing You’ such an indie darling back in 2012. A host of comparisons flash up all throughout this listen, not just IDM artists like Four Tet and Bogdan Raczynski, but from the other sonic parallel he plucks at. ‘Landslide’ sounds like the master tapes between Bon Iver’s 22, A Million and The War on Drugs’ A Deeper Understanding taped over one another in some twisted miracle. In addition, ‘Tell Me You Love Me’ would be inconspicuous on the tracklist of Beach House’s Teen Dream, with similarly airy vocals that carry with it a nebula that drowns the directness of his voice out with elegance.
These IDM joinings make the record a less emotionally-intense and stationary experience than, say, Seven Swans or Carrie, but The Ascension still holds firm as a place for contemplation and bearing. He laments the rigidness of a relationship that’s all too procedural on ‘Video Game’, and strains over his anxiety and stress over the cacophonous ‘Ativan’. Above all, though, ‘America’ argues a pretty good case for being one of the most dazzling moments in his entire catalogue. With his abandoned project to write an album for every US state, as well as a great share of his philosophy and lyrical content, Sufjan is a man deeply proud of his country, and his faith in God. But in this reality, he is directly questioning his faith in the wake of what God did to America, a dramatic shake-up of the foundations of his entire work thus far, like the part of the film where the hero questions everything. He makes the song cry, leaving us with an extended finale that ventures out from the cabin in the woods.