New Sufjan Stevens stuffjan (1 Viewer)

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pete

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The Ascension, the eighth solo studio album from singer, songwriter and composer Sufjan Stevens - and the long awaited follow-up to Carrie & Lowell - is set for release September 25 on Asthmatic Kitty Records.

'America,' the album’s debut single, is out now alongside a video filmed by Sufjan - stream 'America' and pre-order the album HERE, and watch the video HERE

'America,' and in turn The Ascension, is an indictment of a world crumbling around us - and a roadmap out of here.

Sufjan says the foundations of the album are “a call for personal transformation and a refusal to play along with the systems around us.” And its first single stands as “a protest song against the sickness of American culture in particular.”

“Don’t do to me what you did to America,” Sufjan sings. “Don’t do to me what you do to yourself.”

'America' may feel apt for the times, but it was written six years ago - originally worked on during the making of Carrie & Lowell (its forthcoming B-side, 'My Rajneesh' was culled from these sessions as well).

“I was dumbfounded by the song when I first wrote it,” Sufjan says. “Because it felt vaguely mean-spirited and miles away from everything else on Carrie & Lowell. So I shelved it. But when I dug up the demo a few years later I was shocked by its prescience. I could no longer dismiss it as angry and glib. The song was clearly articulating something prophetic and true, even if I hadn’t been able to identify it at the time. That’s when I saw a clear path toward what I had to do next.”

Sufjan then re-recorded the song and spent the next two years writing and recording the rest of the material on The Ascension almost entirely by himself on his computer - working mostly with a drum machine and handful of synthesizers - using 'America' as its thematic template.

Sufjan says: “My objective for this album was simple: Interrogate the world around you. Question anything that doesn’t hold water. Exterminate all bullshit. Be part of the solution or get out of the way. Keep it real. Keep it true. Keep it simple. Keep it moving.”

The result is a “lush, editorial pop album” - as Sufjan describes it - that finds us all at a “terrifying crossroad.”

'America' b/w 'My Rajneesh' is out as a 12-inch single on July 31, with 'My Rajneesh' to be released digitally July 10. Preorder the 12-inch HERE.

SUFJAN STEVENS - THE ASCENSION

1. Make Me An Offer I Cannot Refuse (5:19)
2. Run Away With Me (4:07)
3. Video Game (4:16)
4. Lamentations (3:42)
5. Tell Me You Love Me (4:22)
6. Die Happy (5:47)
7. Ativan (6:32)
8. Ursa Major (3:43)
9. Landslide (5:04)
10. Gilgamesh (3:50)
11. Death Star (4:04)
12. Goodbye To All That (3:48)
13. Sugar (7:37)
14. The Ascension (5:56)
15. America (12:30)


https://asthmatickitty.com
 
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Asthmatic Kitty announces it will be releasing a new album by Sufjan Stevens, Javelin, on October 6th, and presents its lead single, 'So You Are Tired'. Javelin marks Stevens’ first solo album of songs since 2020’s The Ascension, and his first in full singer-songwriter mode since 2015’s Carrie & Lowell, bridging all these approaches like never before. Whether listened to individually or as an album, these 10 songs become something much bigger, the entire experience of Stevens’ 25-year career brought to bear in four-minute bursts of choral, orchestral, and electric wonder.

Javelin pairs musical sweep with emotional breadth. At times, it has the feel of a big team album production - but it is decidedly not: almost every sound here is the result of Stevens at home, building by himself what sometimes feels like a testament to ‘70s Los Angeles studio opulence. The contributions come from a close circle of friends – adrienne maree brown, Hannah Cohen, Pauline Delassus, Megan Lui and Nedelle Torrisi – who provide harmonies on many songs, and Bryce Dessner, who plays acoustic and electric guitar on 'Shit Talk'. Of course, Neil Young wrote the tender and mystic album closer, 'There’s A World'.

Where The Ascension, lauded by The New York Times as “a cry of despair and prayer for redemption,” used ornate but urgent electronics to square up to its moment, Javelin begins like a self-portrait, detailed yet plain. This is Stevens at his most intimate, calling back to Seven Swans or Carrie & Lowell and then calling you close to share in its internal reckoning.

'So You Are Tired' begins with a gently introduced piano before intricate layers of guitar and percussion build, creating a lush, melancholic atmosphere. “So you are tired of us // So rest your head,” Stevens sings in his signature disarming voice, as if the very scenes of hurt and hope it is about to share have only galvanized it through the decades.

Javelin is accompanied by a 48-page book of art and essays all created by Stevens, including a series of meticulous collages, cut-up catalog fantasies, puff-paint word clouds, and iterative color fields. The 10 short essays - alternatively funny, tragic, poignant, obtuse, and specific - offer little glimpses into loves and losses that have shaped him, and, in turn, these songs.
 
on listen 4 so far. deadly.

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edit: this nonsense of starting the bandcamp playback on track #2? STOP THAT.
 
So sufjan Stevens isn't cat Stevens. I still can't get my head around it. Ooh baby baby it's a wild world. Indeed.
 

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