Earlier this week, Sufjan Stevens announced that he will be releasing a new album called The Ascension on September 25. Today he has shared the first single, which will be the album’s closing track, called “America”.
Rather than a tribute to his home country, he says that the song is “a protest song against the sickness of American culture in particular.” It’s not a particularly angry-sounding protest song, more in line with the harmonic and spiritual sounds suggested by the title The Ascension, but it does include the lines “Don’t do to me what you did to America / Don’t do to me what you do to yourself.”
Sufjan Stevens’ new album The Ascension comes out on September 25 through Asthmatic Kitty (pre-order). The track list is:
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)
