Sufjan Stevens introduces his new album The Ascension, due on September 25th 2020, with the 12-minute-and-30-second-long song ‘America’, whose title is pretty self-explanatory.

The single is full of biblical references and rhetorical questions: Sufjan Stevens tries to put into words the sorrow and the shame he feels about the current political situation in the US. He had already tried to so, shortly after Donald Trump’s election, on Tumblr: “Christ would be ashamed of us”. With the collaboration of The National’s Bryce Dessner, ‘America’ holds a heavier weight thanks to the haunting guitar synths that explode in a cacophonous symphony after the fourth minute, accompanied by faraway screams embodies by musical instruments.

“Is it love you’re after? A sign of the flood or one more disaster” is the beginning of the eternal track, which is also the beginning of what seems a psychological decline. Sufjan Stevens’ lyricism is frantic yet posed, repetitive yet gripping. Towards the end of the song, Stevens repeats “Don’t do to me what you did to America, don’t do to me what you did to yourself,” reflecting on the tiring and tragic events that are going on in the United States.

“I have loved you, I have grieved. I’m ashamed to admit I no longer believe”

In ‘America,’ there clearly are doubts about faith, questioning if this is really what we – as people – should be going after. Pitchfork revealed that Sufjan Stevens declared that his inner feelings have changed with time: “Now I feel a universal dread that I had never felt before”. This dread is, in my opinion, represented by the last four, endless, minutes of ‘America;’ a hauntingly beautiful piano alongside strings and echoed guitars, which is almost an apocalyptic ending. Is this how the world is going to end? Is this a representation of the eerie feeling that everyone is experiencing, yet surrounded by a weird comfort?

I will be honest, a 12-minute-long song is very difficult to listen to, because our attention span is getting shorter each day. But sometimes it is the only way to let it all out: he has given himself a voice that the world wanted to silence. The last four minutes are mostly instrumental, letting the listener taking a breather while still hovering ominously on their head, almost as a reminder that we are all stuck in this, that not even beauty, as tragic and extreme it sounds, can save the world now. It’s all on us.

“I am broken, I am beat; but I will find my way like a Judas in heat…”