The Ascension: On Rising Above The Self
Sufjan Steven’s The Ascension - his first solo album released since 2015’s Carrie & Lowell - finds Stevens revisiting his electronic repertoire from his 2010 album The Age of Adz. A sudden departure from New York, his home of 20 years, left Stevens with only a keyboard and a drum machine, and somehow he managed to create a sprawling soundscape that swells from spare, lo-fi beats to symphonic crescendos.
One can only imagine Stevens’ fatigue. His 2015 album Carrie & Lowell tells the history of the titular characters, his mother and stepfather, and chronicles the pain he suffered at her death. Following this, the 2016 presidential elections occurred, and, well, we all know what happened. Stevens has meticulously catalogued the story of America through his use of urban folklore and historical references, oftentimes highlighting both the good and the bad, then subverting it. But now, the America he had so fondly idealized has begun to unravel. The hopefulness once abundant on his earlier albums has receded. The personal grief expressed on Carrie & Lowell has subsided, too, and in its place a new lamentation has emerged; the focus has shifted to “a generalised social misery” that plagues us all in 2020.
The album’s final track “America” was written in 2014, but put on the backburner. It wasn’t until years later that Stevens realized that the song was a reflection of his true feelings. A 12 minute epic filled with his trademark Christian references, the song, Stevens says, is a “political protest song” in which he denounces his faith in the American Dream. The song ebbs and flows with a hypnotic, alarm-like beat that gives way to layered vocals that resemble a symphony. The individual elements slowly lead into one another until it becomes a cacophony of cinematic proportions, all the while the same phrase is repeated: “Don’t do to me what you did to America.” Then suddenly, there is a shift. At around the 7:30 mark, the percussion stops, and all that remains are the atmospheric, almost meditative synths. The last five minutes are like the calm after the storm, the destruction laid bare. Though acting as the closer, the song packs the heaviest, most intricate sounds on the album. While he initially thought the tone to be “bitchy and mean-spirited,” he also found it to be empowering. With this as his template, he began to work on the rest of the album.
Sufjan Stevens is widely known for his sad and somber music and lyrics, the perfect soundtrack for longing and despair (looking at you “Mystery of Love”). But on this album, he expresses an emotion that may shock some listeners: anger. Whereas before he would weave his beliefs and views into narratives, he is now speaking directly, and he is upset. “I don’t wanna play your video game,” he sings in “Video Game,” a song criticising the way social media culture has promoted self-absorption and self-promotion. The song titles are all lifted from cliches, common phrases and pop culture references, and his lyrics are inspired by age-old aphorisms. They’re direct and commanding. He has found a way to repackage these colloquialisms to express his thoughts, fears, desires and stories.
“Come on, baby, gimme some sugar,” a cliché meaning to spare some love is expanded upon in “Sugar,” to mean spread the love; take in all the good you can handle and share it with others. “Tranquilize me, sanitize me, Ativan” he sings on the track named after the anxiety medication, an artistic representation of a panic attack. “Death star into space … vandalize what you create,” from “Death Star,” named after the planet-destroying weapon from Star Wars, a critique on the human behaviors and practices that have tarnished the environmental health of our planet. On “I Wanna Die Happy” he repeats the phrase over and over, using only the music to guide the song through every possible meaning that the phrase could carry. His words are as blunt as ever, and his sentiments are reflected by the “cold, impersonal, synthetic” nature of the music.
Make no mistake, the music itself is not cold, but Stevens views the electronic production — lacking his signature acoustic guitar that has cemented him as a legend in the folk music canon — as being inherently devoid of warmth. And while it works to the benefit of the overall tone of the album, he is still able to breathe life into the music, making it personal and accessible. The electronic production creates another unexpected quality: this album is incredibly easy to dance to. Not in the way you would at a club or a party, not even ironically, but just because the music becomes so overwhelming at points, flooded with a wave of synths blaring over bass drums thumping with the cadence of a rapid heartbeat that it feels imperative to move.
Much of the album, with its industrial electronic production and critical lyrics, is anxiety inducing. But his intention is not to worry us. The songs, Stevens says, are directed at the listener. His goal is to start “conversations about humanity and the world and society.” He isn’t trying to preach to us. He knows all the difficulties people have been facing, not just this year, but since the beginning of America’s foundation. This is not a time when he (literally a middle aged white man, albeit my favorite one) should act as the voice for the people. But his 45 years of life have taught him that in order to become a better person, you must shift your focus from yourself to helping others.
Luke 6:31 states “Do to others as you would have them do to you” which has been more commonly rephrased as “treat others how you want to be treated.” “Don’t do to me what you did to America,” Stevens pleads, “don’t to me what you do to yourself,” he continues, a call and response. Those lines, which were amongst the first to be written and the last heard on the album, are not meant to be said to each other, they’re meant to be said in unison, to the country that created these hardships for us in the first place. The truth is that Sufjan Stevens still loves America, but the United States that he has formerly mythologized is a farce. The real America is the people. In helping others, we help ourselves. In order to start solving our problems, we must first figure out what is wrong. In order to do that, The Ascension suggests that we turn to our neighbor and ask, “How may I help you today?”
Stevens as captured by Eric Ogden