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May

Sufjan Stevens

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Sugar is my favorite of the 3, but America has grown on me immensely. I’m ready for my soothing moody RnB sufjan album. Apparently Janet Jackson was a bit inspiration for the record. 

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Sugar sounds like being a little too (uncomfortably) drunk at a club while you're waiting for your unfaithful partner to stop dancing and come home but you know they won't stop for you because they've already moved on and are just waiting for you to end it. :crying4:

 

I've noticed that these songs all have rejections in them:

  • I don't want to play (Video Games)
  • Don't make me wait (Sugar)
  • Don't do to me (America)

Probably coincidental (certainly as My Rajneesh is a bit more optimistic), but it's definitely saying something to me as people often know what they don't like, but can't exactly work out what they do. It's much easier to list things you don't want instead of being direct and saying what you do want. 

 

Also for me, Sugar is the perfect complement to Video Games, making me like it more as I am starting to appreciate the sonic feel of the record. I CAN'T WAIT. :isee:

 


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This awesome interview with The Atlantic just came out with some great info on the album which is making me SO EXCITED!!!

 

Quote

Stevens’s resentment refracts kaleidoscopically through The Ascension’s 15 songs, which total an hour and 20 minutes of music. The lyrics impressionistically address love, death, and drugs with an overarching call to defy modern society’s materialism, lies, and idol worship.

 

Quote

The Ascension, like its creator’s personal affect, is more jaunty than might be expected. After the hushed strumming of Carrie & Lowell, Stevens returned to the synthesizers and drum machines that defined 2010’s Age of Adz, a dazzling left-turn of an album that decisively ended his 50 states phase. Although The Ascension is more depressing than the madcap Adz, its approach does call to mind Stevens’s 2010–11 tour, for which he employed backup dancers while clad in neon. The Ascension’s song titles reference many famous works—The Godfather, the epic of Gilgamesh, Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Run Away With Me”—and some of the hookier, danceable moments evoke Janet Jackson. A goth streak runs throughout, too, starting when the opening track reaches a warehouse-techno climax that sounds like Nine Inch Nails covering the Beatles’ “A Day in the Life.”

 

Quote

“I just got so sick of folk music,” Stevens said. “Don’t get me wrong: I’m fundamentally and always will be a folk singer-songwriter. But I needed to exorcise all of those folk idioms ... I also think this record, because it is political and bossy and bitchy, needed to be somewhat fun, sonically.”

 

Quote

The droning new song “Ativan” portrays a panic spiral treated with medication; Stevens says he wants to bring transparency to the sort of mental-health issues he has dealt with. On a later track, “Goodbye to All That”—a hopeful-sounding highlight whose sleigh bells and choral harmonies recall Stevens’s many Christmas albums—he even mentions his birth year, 1975, before singing, “It’s too late to have died a young man.” The song, like the Joan Didion essay it’s named for, is his kiss-off to New York City. It’s also a call for the listener, and the world, to make a break with the toxic past.

 

:excited::excited::excited::excited::excited::excited:

 

Read more:

https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2020/09/sufjan-stevens-ascension-bossy-and-bitchy/616366/


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16 minutes ago, takeitdoen said:

This awesome interview with The Atlantic just came out with some great info on the album which is making me SO EXCITED!!!

 

 

 

 

 

:excited::excited::excited::excited::excited::excited:

 

Read more:

https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2020/09/sufjan-stevens-ascension-bossy-and-bitchy/616366/

Woo he and Lana are coming with sibling records :defeated:Maybe the downfall of the US isn't so bad after all 


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I can't believe there's something left in my chest anymore 

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I need more time to get used to the atmosphere of it and its repetitiveness, but I overall I still really like the whole project. Tell Me You Love me is my standout track. 


giphy.gif

I can't believe there's something left in my chest anymore 

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1 hour ago, Formation said:

I need more time to get used to the atmosphere of it and its repetitiveness, but I overall I still really like the whole project. Tell Me You Love me is my standout track. 

Perfect sum up! I have just finished listening and haven't fully formed my mind, but I know I like it and considering how much I've come to love the singles I think it'll be a slow burn. 

 

Stand outs for me are 

-Tell Me You Love // by far my favourite

-The Ascension // if people like Carrie and Lowell this sounds like it could be a B-Side 

-Sugar

 

The vocals on LAAAAANDSLIDE are great too. 


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Love the whole thing, I can’t pick favorites because they are all contenders for me, though the thrill of the first track is still coursing through my veins. 
 

when I read some reviews talk about its repetitiveness I got worried, but it’s repetitive in a different way than the critics made it sound. I was also concerned about long stretches of electronic instrumental music being present in every song like the end of America or the beginning of sugar, but any moment where this happens feels correct in terms of flow of the record. 
 

album of the year so far, we will see what lana brings, but it’ll be hard for her to top this. 

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