‘The Ascension’ Transcends Politics And Grief To Worship
Sufjan Stevens. Photo courtesy of his Instagram.
(REVIEW) Can you listen to Sufjan Stevens as an act of worship?
His perceived demographic — Midwesterners and those who enjoy listening to music in bed for the express purpose of being sad — would suggest not.
Stevens is regarded as one of the defining indie rock artists of the 2010s, whose astral melodies and lyrics imbued with perpetual longing creates nostalgia for events that haven’t actually happened.
In fact, it’s probably impossible to count the number of pre-teens and teens who discovered “Chicago” from the 2005 album “Illinois” and were, for a moment, Franciscan monks living out of a van and traversing from city to city — when they were really just staring wistfully out of the back window of their parents’ seven-seater minivan.
But more than that, Stevens — who is a Christian himself — has found Christianity an influence, or maybe just an inescapable concept, throughout his career. The religion he sings of is rough, messy and personal.
His newest album, “The Ascension,” is rougher than ever before, filled with a near (but not total) hopelessness for himself, for the U.S. and for his God.
Released on Sept. 25, “The Ascension” comes in the purgatory middle of COVID-19 closings, reopenings, reclosings, Black Lives Matter protests and with only a month left to go in the 2020 election: it’s an apt time for an album that airs political and economic grievances.
But “America,” the 12-and-a-half-minute track that finishes the album (and was released as a single on July 3), was written six years ago.
In this way, “The Ascension” functions like the political coming-out of an artist whose music primarily focuses on personal tragedy: Stevens is tired of a country bogged down with materialism and suffering. As he told The Guardian, “In experiencing so much and growing older, I’ve realised there was definitely a naivety to my former self.”
But with “The Ascension,” “I have a sense of urgency I don’t know I had before.”
He expresses resentment for not including this in his music before in the album’s title track, in which he laments, “For by living for myself I was living for unrest.”
Rather than the gentle, stringy blues that accompany most of his past work, “The Ascension” is dominated by haunting synth pop.
This is not Stevens’ first foray into synthesized music. It’s similar to individual tracks from past albums and, more recently, the all-instrumental “Aporia” he released with stepfather Lowell Brams in March 2020. Stevens has said by way of a playlist that “Aporia” is inspired by the scores from Blade Runner and The Last Temptation of Christ, among other sources.
This particular brand of existential electronica conjures to mind the type of barren landscape that’s portrayed in T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land,” a Hieronymus Bosch depiction of hell or otherwise any science fiction world that has been laid to waste.
It’s harrowing. It’s desperate.
The lyrics, in perfect harmony with the music, reflect a similar mental and spiritual state.
In “America,” Stevens portrays himself as someone with a deep devotion to God:
“I have worshipped, I have cried
I have put my hands in the wounds on your side
I have tasted of your blood
I have choked on the waters, I abated the flood
I am broken, I am beat
But I will find my way like a Judas in heat.”
In the most recognizable religious imagery on the album, he describes being close enough to Jesus during his crucifixion to feel the wound at his side (it’s said in the book of John that once Jesus was dead, soldiers pierced his side and both blood and water spilled out).
But he describes himself as Judas, Jesus’s betrayer, too.
And this perceived closeness is only used to combat an anxiety that God will abandon him, begging frequently, “Don’t do to me what you did to America.”
Not-so-coincidentally, anxiety is a larger theme within the album. The song “Ativan” — named after the drug commonly used to treat anxiety — contains a doubt of God and questions the meaning of chaos.
He asks, to an unnamed and unanswering God, “Is it all for something? Is it all part of a plan?”
If nothing else, Stevens retains a level of devotion that feels more ritualistic than anything else. Despite whatever doubts he may have, he still makes the fervent prayer: “Fill me with the blood of Jesus / Clean my plate 'til he receives us.”
He even manages to out-angst the bleak book of Ecclesiastes in the title track with a play on words of the verse that says there’s a season for everything, declaring instead that “to everything, there is no meaning / A season of pain and hopelessness.”
The song continues:
“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.”
It encapsulates the worst possible kind of identity crisis. What’s left if you feel as though you’re not important to yourself, to the people around you or to God?
The most existential the album gets is “Die Happy,” which offers nearly six minutes of the same plea: “I wanna die happy.”
It’s such a simple phrase that leaves a myriad unsaid. It offers no solution, and even implies that such a goal is impossible. There’s no mention of the afterlife. Is this all there is? Are we always going to be so confined to despair?
This isn’t the final definition of Stevens’ relationship with God, though. Often, he places himself as the devoted supplicant who God listens and speaks to.
In “Ursa Major,” he prays on behalf of mankind:
“Lord, I ask for patience now
Call off all of your invasion
There's is beauty where I see it
Everywhere that I can feel it.”
It’s not unlike the plea Abraham makes when he’s interceding on behalf of Sodom, the sinful city. God intends to destroy Sodom because of the sin of its people, but Abraham strikes a deal.
“Suppose there are 50 righteous within the city,” Abraham suggests. “Will you then sweep away the place and not spare it for the 50 righteous who are in it? Far be it from you to do such a thing, to put the righteous to death with the wicked, so that the righteous fare as the wicked! Far be that from you! Shall not the Judge of all the earth do what is just?”
He continues this bargain down to a righteous 10 which still can’t be found in the city. But the wondrous thing is that Abraham prays, and God listens. The same assumption is that these lyrics will remind God of the beauty of his creation and convince him to save it.
More than just the man who speaks on a fallen humanity’s behalf, Stevens shows himself in “Ursa Major” as a follower of God who seeks his counsel: “I am on the verge of sorrow / Tell me, Lord, which road to follow.”
Ultimately, however far he falls — into betrayal, anxiety or doubt — Stevens is following God, and this God is someone who he believes will ultimately speak back and rescue him from his suffering.
It may not be overwhelmingly hopeful, but “The Ascension” is raw and honest. It’s a plea for God to become a guide, healer and purpose where there is no direction or meaning.
And that may make it one of the best worship albums this year has to offer.
Jillian Cheney is a Poynter-Koch fellow for Religion Unplugged who loves consuming good culture and writing about it. She also reports on American Protestantism and Evangelical Christianity. You can find her on Twitter @_jilliancheney.