The new Sufjan Stevens song, “America”, is over 12 minutes long, which is actually short for him, given that he wrote “Impossible Soul”, which ran for 25 wild minutes. He has a lot to say. That longer song boasted numerous parts and movements, while “America” is, mostly, just one mood: exasperation. The country Stevens was born in and has written entire albums about is falling apart, both physically and ideologically, and what better way to show that than with an intense and building lament that packs in claustrophobia and beauty before, desperately, trying to make sure the latter doesn’t disappear entirely, via some end stretch twinkling ambience.
If Stevens’s last album, Carrie & Lowell, was about the death of his mother, Carrie, and the psychological effect that had on him, “America” appears to be about the death of his country and the possible toll that might take on him too. “Don’t do to me what you did to America,” is the much-repeated refrain and it doesn’t take a great leap to think about the division, intolerance and general decimation of liberal optimism that’s ravaged the US over the past four years and imagine that Stevens, a big fan of togetherness, tolerance and liberal optimism, might be worried.
“I’m ashamed to admit I no longer believe I have loved you, I received,” he sings – a comment on handed-down patriotism and how if the country you were told to admire from birth acts like a stranger, it is a reasonable time to walk away.
But nothing with Stevens is ever simple. Carrie & Lowell’s key track, “Fourth Of July”, for instance, repeated, “We’re all going to die!” but, live, turned that chorus into a rave. Similarly, here, there is much debate about God, with heavy beats and squelch – it's party existentialism. As major modern artists go, only Kanye rivals Stevens for extreme amounts of divine conviction and guilt and America is full of it. As is, rim-shot, the song. The cross, doves and Judas all turn up, while its opening line, “Is it love you’re after? / A sign of the flood or one more disaster?” is evocative of either a man, or a nation, willing on the second coming to prove their belief was a good idea all along. Stevens has been dealing with this explicitly since his album Seven Swans in 2004.
Despite this depth and disillusionment, though, “America” never mopes. It is a song that would not, in any way, fit on Carrie & Lowell. Instead, Stevens’ opus of experimental and riotous noise collage, 2010’s The Age Of Adz, is the better reference point, synth-heavy, choirs and no standout acoustic guitar. The Age Of Adz boasts “Impossible Soul” and, probably, hints at where the new record, The Ascension, out in September, will lead. Long songs, similar artwork – frankly it could sound like anything, but Stevens tends to make music that is the opposite to what he made just one before, so it would be an enormous surprise if the other songs on The Ascension are simple, plaintive folk.
Their creator has far too restless a mind, in a restless time, and if the 12 and a bit minutes of this suggests anything, it is that he is gearing up to deal with the world he has found himself in – with the knotty words and dense sounds to try to sum it all up perfectly.
Jonathan Dean is senior writer for Sunday Times Culture.
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