what is so funny young drip gawd?

The best one so far. Cant believe the album is coming next week. The rollout has been so long and slow

If you're a big fan of Illinois, for sure check out The Avalanche and Michigan

Age of Adz is a more experimental album from him but one that is loved by many fans.

Seven Swans and Carrie & Lowell are more soft and folksy projects that get a lot of praise as well

Eerie production

going to cram listen his discography before this comes out

so so soon ...

still holding out on listening to singles

incredible video. trying to stop myself from listening to the song on repeat til the album drops

just over a week to go. trying to not listen to the singles at all. america slapped though.

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

new profile for The Atlantic, here are some of the more album-based tidbits that are in the article:

• Stevens’ 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 d**** with an overarching call to defy modern society’s materialism, lies, and idol worship. “I’m speaking to you,” Stevens said. “You are the subject of this record. You, the listener.” It’s an intimidating album, and I asked whether he was worried about coming off as didactic or preachy. “I think I’ve earned the right to be didactic and preachy,” he said. “I’ve been doing this for 20 years, and how many songs have I written about my own personal grievances with judgment against myself, self-deprecation, and sorrow? I was like, No, I don’t want to write another song about my dead mother. I want to write a song that is casting judgment against the world.”

• 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.”

• “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 b****y, needed to be somewhat fun, sonically.”

• That’s not to say he’s entirely removed himself from his music. 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.

Damn this makes me more hype. Being comapred to agenof adz

Just save it for the album release

liked this new one a lot more than video game, esp the intro

Really can’t believe that we’re getting a new sufjan album finally one of the only good things happening this year

Music in general been perhaps the best thing about this year

Definitely been an extremely strong year

one more week!

wonder if it'll leak