Sufjan Stevens review, The Ascension: A loveably retro fleet of bulky analogue synths course through this record

The banjo-plucker is back with an album to get us through the darkest of days

Sufjan Stevens (Asthmatic Kitty Records)

This year, sensitive indie-kid Sufjan Stevens turned his website into the Jar Jar Binks Fan Club and started singing about the "Death Star" over igneous beats that hit listeners' eardrums like meteor showers.  

Though the orthodox Christian banjo-plucker was raised in with a strong and simple sense of Alliance v Empire morality, he’s been telling interviewers he has “grown old and world weary, disenchanted”. So, at 45, he pilots a loveably retro fleet of bulky analogue synths through his eighth album sounding more Han Solo than Luke Skywalker: a comfort-seeking mercenary grabbing any solace he can get to sustain him through these dark days.

The sonic shift was driven partially by Stevens' love for the metallic pop percussion of Janet Jackson’s 1989 album Rhythm Nation and partly by circumstances. A bossy landlord and then a rat infestation forced Stevens from his home planet: the New York home and studio he’s inhabited for the past two decades. It’s a move referenced on the “Goodbye to All That”, on which he romantically describes himself “alone in my car/ hopelessly adventuring to wherever you are” as vintage arcade effects burble bittersweet nothings in the background.  

Stevens was forced to leave much of his equipment in storage when he moved upstate to the Catskills, where he noted the locals embraced a “stay positive/ get the job done” philosophy.  

So lovers of Stevens' quirky, literate lyrics will notice many songs on The Ascension orbit around cliches. The opening track is called "Make Me an Offer I Can’t Refuse". Others are called “Die Happy” and “Run Away with Me”.  

Sufjan Stevens in 2018 (Getty Images)

“There’s such a proliferation of these phrases in our society and we shrug them off and find them meaningless,” he told The Quietus, “but right now I’m desperate for some kind of platitude that tells me where to go, and how to go about my business in a way that’s healthy and sustainable. These phrases are all carried down throughout the generations because they get us through the day.”

Although many pop songs parrot such phrases unthinkingly, Stevens interrogates them as he circles them: irritable, frustrated, soothed and accepting in equal measure. As ever, he’s powered by a knack for pretty melodies, which he allows to breathe and evolve through various moods. So “Die Happy” opens in the detached chill of zero gravity before whooshing up to an exhilarating warp speed, speeding through warm chords like spectral nebulae as the percussion clatters on. The 15 songs on this 81-minute album mostly dock at around four minutes, like the mesmerising "Video Game", which sees crystalline, Kraftwerky top lines skating over Steven’s politely sung refusal to play by society’s self-destructive rules.  

Other tracks drift on for longer, like the pushy trance of "Sugar" and the closing track "America", which lasts over 12 minutes. “I have loved you, I have grieved/ I’m ashamed to admit I no longer believe,” sighs Stevens, his vocal low in the mix between swells of organ and an electric guitar whose strings tangle like steel wires in pitch freefall.

Some fans have wondered if "America" is Stevens’ “breaking up with God” song. But he says its about precisely what it says on the tin. The man who originally planned to write an album about every state, but only managed to explore two, says the song is about a “crisis of faith about my identity as an American, and about my relationship to our culture, which I think is really diseased right now... It’s overtly a political protest song, specifically about America.”

As a huge fan of Stevens’ exquisitely personal and musically detailed 2015 album, Carrie & Lowell, I wasn’t sure I’d love the trippy new Macro sound. But, though some might find the odd track a bit noodly, I was rendered wonderfully weightless by a journey that delivered whole galaxies of nuance in a universal context. Trust me: the force is strong in this one.