“I’ve lost my faith in everything,” he sings in “Tell Me You Love Me,” to which he adds the telling phrase “anyway.” He wonders, “As the world turns, making such a mess/What’s the point of it when everything’s dispossessed?” The sense of longing for meaning may be deeply personal in the isolation of our current pandemic, or it may be all of us together, the whole nation of “America,” the album’s 12 and half minute closing number. There’s an ambivalence, an uncertainty that permeates the music, capturing this moment in time. All that has failed him badly, and the singer/songwriter is hoping for something much more tangible and real, but not sure what that might be, what it even looks like. Yet he’s refusing to settle for the advertised bumper-sticker slogan, commercially designed, one-size-fits all production that everyone’s marketing. While one can certainly hear two of the album’s early video/singles, “Video Game” and “Sugar,” as dance remixes and both include choreographed dance in the videos, both find the singer yearning for… something, whether it’s love, salvation, or connection. In fact, the opening tracks “Make Me an Offer I Cannot Refuse” and “Run Away With Me” nearly drip with a haunted sadness. Sufjan Stevens brings a much more focused sense of personal expression to his music, as if he’s playing his computer, synth keyboards and drum machines with the same delicate touch he has brought to songs played on his banjo. There’s a tendency to view much of the electronic music made today through an EDM lens, where there’s often a catchy loop at the front end, but the tempo and progression of the track is focused largely on moving asses on the dance floor. While on The Ascension, his 8th studio album, the artist has once again turned to electronic music, the textures and focus tends to be darker than on The Age of Adz, and as intricate and personal as anything Stevens has done previously.
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The Age of Adz (2010) turned full on toward Stevens’ more expansive electro-pop influences, while Carrie & Lowell (2015) saw him return to his indie folk roots for an intimate reflection on the death of his mother and then some. On his most successful effort to date, 2005’s Illinois, Stevens revealed the breadth of his musical interests, from indie folk to pop/rock all the way to showtunes with full orchestrations, and electronica.
By now, fans of Sufjan Stevens have learned to approach each new project with an open mind.
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