19 Thoughts on Sufjan Stevens' The Ascension
- Is The Ascension the best album of the year? It’s certainly a serious contender in a year during which there has been, by my estimation, some stiff competition. There’s been Fiona Apple’s Fetch the Bolt Cutters and Phoebe Bridgers’ Punisher; Dogleg’s Melee is one of the most exciting rock debuts in recent memory, and I’ve still been personally waving my flag for Sorry’s exquisitely dark and cool 925. Another entry came this week in the form of Fleet Foxes’ warm and oceanic Shore, and I suspect there’ll be one or two more contenders coming around the bend as this otherwise awful year comes to what is assuredly going to be an otherwise awful end.
- A not-so-brief digression here because, if you’ve been reading this newsletter regularly, that’s kind of how these things go: I love Shore after spending a few weeks with it already, and similar to Sufjan Stevens I believe that Robin Pecknold is one of the best songwriters of his generation full stop. But something also feels missing while I listen to it, and I think it’s finally dawned on me what that “missing” is: the lived experience of hearing it somewhere else than in my own headphones.
- Cracking wise about how often music in the “indie” sphere functions as a soundtrack to consumption is a time-honored critical tradition. When I reviewed Fleet Foxes’ First Collection 2006-2009 for Pitchfork in 2018, I couldn’t make it past the first paragraph before making a joke about baristas and oat milk. I’ve done this about bands I don’t particularly care for, too. Call it a crutch, call it a bit, either way it is what it is.
- In reality, though, hearing music in public—live, in a store, while you’re eating with friends, anywhere but when you’re alone—can shape how you feel about it in very positive ways. When I went to my local coffee shop the other day and heard Phoebe Bridgers’ “Kyoto” playing from beyond the pickup window, I felt something like a sense of relief to hear this music that I’ve considered an intensely personal experience to listen to in public. When I heard the same coffee shop listening to Sonic Youth’s Murray Street a few months back, I felt a similar sense of comfort that other people, too, were listening to music. It’s a sensation that’s been robbed of us for what looks like a long time, and I feel like I need that sensation with something like Shore. The fact that it’s rarer than ever? It feels terrible.
- A friend told me early on about this newsletter that it was so nice to have something to read regularly that isn’t about the pandemic, so I have to apologize to her in advance for the following thought.
- Man, this year has been fucking hard. Personally, I was not really feeling too hot pre-pandemic, so to watch so much of what I associated with life and living it disappear has not been ideal. Before the age of COVID-19, the attention economy was already being pushed to its limits in nearly every sphere, and over the last six months it feels like there’s so many terrible or potentially terrible things—some of which have long been in place pre-pandemic and have been exacerbated by every structural inequality revealed to those who previously pretended to be blind—that it’s hard to know what to focus on at any given second, to the point where the act of talking about how it makes one feel personally triggers self-accusations of emotional selfishness. There’s been bright spots when it comes to finding the joy in life, whether it’s the act of living itself and loving those around you to the comfort that a beautiful sunset can bring. Otherwise, it’s been a year of pain, intense anger, and above all else mourning, and the fact that it sometimes seems as if it’s nowhere even close to ending causes the biggest bruise of all.
- The Ascension doesn’t feel like something built for communal experience. That isn’t to say it can’t be: Sufjan’s last album, Carrie and Lowell, was mired in death and the pain of remembrance, and the accompanying live album (I missed the tour, which I’m still kicking myself over) blew out his fragile-sounding and distant folk songs into something cosmic and mind-blowing—grief as psychedelia, every pang of passing an exploding star.
- Okay, time for some good memories: I saw The Age of Adz tour twice, near the beginning (Prospect Park) and what I think was the final show (Beacon Theatre), with my close friend Ryan Dombal of Pitchfork fame. Both shows represented some of the most incredible live music I’ve ever witnessed; Sufjan even dressed up as a big diamond at one point. At the Beacon Theatre show, David Byrne was sitting near us, and as he got up to leave when it ended he was carrying a bike helmet. Peak David Byrne.
- The Age of Adz was colossally misunderstood and, in some circles, close to despised upon release—and I’m starting to get the impression that The Ascension is destined for a similar fate. I obviously don’t agree with any critical lowballing of this one, but I get it. There’s no simplicity to this stuff, no easy feelings to suss out. It is an album that sounds, as Sufjan puts it at one point, angry and depressed—feelings that are certainly relatable right now, as well as feelings that one might want to steer clear of consuming more of for the sake of personal well-being. We’re talking about a record that ends with a 12-minute-plus song about the centuries-long poisoning of the United States that features the accusatory line “Don’t look at me like I’m acting hysterical.” Again, no easy feelings here.
- Another way that The Ascension bears close relation to The Age of Adz: the electronics. Whereas The Age of Adz sounded (and still sounds) ecstatic with its use of synthesizers, drum machines and samplers—like a kid running around knocking everything over in the most anxious candy store in the world—The Ascension is more smoothed-out. I’d say it sounds more confident in terms of its use of beats and non-acoustic sounds, but that would suggest a casting of doubt as to how The Age of Adz was supposed to sound, and given that record came from Sufjan experiencing a debilitating neurological infection, I think its frenzied approach suits the source material quite well.
- I typically go with last-name-basis approach when referring to musicians in writing, but “Sufjan” just feels like the most comfortable way to refer to Sufjan Stevens in this piece. I was going to be like, “And I don’t know why!” But I think I fall to the faux-personal when talking about his art because it always feels like his art is there for me when I need it.
- I’ll do the In Rainbows thing with Sufjan’s catalog because it’s not that hard and won’t take that long: I don’t think he’s made a bad album to date. (I count The Avalanche as an album, too.) The compositional stuff, the holiday stuff—it’s nice, I could take it or leave it, whatever. Not for me, not a knock.
- My favorite album? For the longest time, it was Michigan. (For what it’s worth, I think Illinois has aged the worst, even though it still has plenty of classic songs and is personally near and dear to me.) Carrie and Lowell took the top spot a year or two back. It might be The Ascension at this point.
- Favorite song? “Tonya Harding (in D Major).” It’s Sufjan at his most empathetic, and it sounds more winter-y than all of his Christmas songs combined. (The other version of this song is nice too, but I like the sweep of this one more.)
- I’ve been obsessed with how often Sufjan relies on raga-like repetition in recent years, and it’s all over The Ascension. (“Die Happy.” Need I say more?) But it’s something that’s run through the DNA of his career, from the Steve Reich-isms of Michigan on. Sometimes I find it annoying, and then it settles into that sweet spot in my brain where I’m locked in. Feels like a magic trick sometimes.
- One more thing about the potential divisiveness of what I think is an incredible record: The Ascension seems personal in a different way from Carrie and Lowell. There’s not much storytelling to hang onto, just searing and open-ended emotions. It’s uncomfortable to listen to! But I find great comfort in it anyway.
- The Ascension and its title track—the latter of which just might be the greatest song Sufjan’s ever written—seems very much about the loss of faith, so I may as well go a little into my own relationship with religion. I’m a confirmed Catholic, but I don’t associate with the religion in any way, shape, or form, and that’s largely due to the various abuses the church has been responsible for since its existence. (Watching Deliver Us From Evil was a turning point. How could it not be?) I’m spiritual but not in the Goop sense, I don’t know what I believe in except the fact that good lies somewhere in humanity even as it seems to almost constantly be in hiding.
- At the beginning of the pandemic—when it was terrifying to go outside because we knew so little (and, to be clear, we still don’t know much), when sirens were going by our apartment constantly and we knew exactly why, when we were still uncertain how long this was going to last (again, still there)—my wife told me she had a sore throat one day. It turned out to be nothing, but inside, panic consumed me. I suddenly found myself praying to a god that I am increasingly certain does not exist, purely out of habit. Again, she was fine. There was something inside of me that said, “Did praying work?” But it could’ve also just been luck, or the abundance of caution we were practicing. I guess that’s why “mystery” seems so closely tied with “religion.”
- “The Ascension” sounds to me like Sufjan’s reached some sort of new point in his own spiritual journey, or at least come to terms with the bitterness that can come from realizing that faith is just that and nothing more. It’s an astonishing piece of songwriting from one of the greatest living songwriters, here’s the part that never fails to blow my mind:
- “And now it frightens me, the thought against my chest
- To think I was asking for a reason
- Explaining why everything's a total mess
- And now it frightens me, the dreams that I possess
- To think I was acting like a believer
- When I was just angry and depressed
- And to everything, there is no meaning
- A season of pain and hopelessness
- I shouldn't have looked for revelation
- I should have resigned myself to this
- I thought I could change the world around me
- I thought I could change the world for best
- I thought I was called in convocation
- I thought I was sanctified and blessed
- But now it strengthens me to know the truth at last
- That everything comes from consummation
- And everything comes with consequence
- And I did it all with exultation
- While you did it all with hopelessness
- Yes, I did it all with adoration
- While you killed it off with all of your holy mess”
- There’s a positivity to be found here, in leaving old beliefs and habits behind and embracing the fact that meaninglessness is, in its way, without limitation in terms of what you want to see in the future. It’s one of the most comforting sentiments I’ve come in contact with all year, and one of many reasons I’m thankful that Sufjan Stevens is still among us to deliver his own personal revelations.