The Ascension

《The Ascension》是创作型歌手Sufjan Stevens的第八张录音室专辑，是他自2015年的《Carrie & Lowell》以来的第一张个人LP，也是他与Lowell Brams合作专辑《Aporia》之后的第二张2020年发行的专辑。

这张专辑是在2020年6月30日发布的，同时发布的还有12分钟的主打单曲即最后一支单曲《America》，这首歌与《My Rajneesh》一起发布，后者是《America》黑胶唱片版的b版，是在《Carrie & Lowell》时期制作的。

在《Ascension》中，Sufjan回到了奠基2010年《Age of Adz》和2017年《Planetarium》的合成器和鼓机。这部分是由于将他的家和录音棚从布鲁克林搬到卡茨基尔(纽约州北部)一个更偏远的地方的实际影响。他收起了大量的弦乐器、打击乐器、木管乐器和各种其他乐器，他求助于合成器和鼓机。正如对卫报记者Al Horner在采访中所说:“这就是为什么这张唱片的性质如此简单:我只能使用我能插入电脑的东西，我的心思已经不在那些民谣意象上了。我把我的吉他打包放进了储藏室，我想我在精神上也把那种美感打包了。”

在歌词上，这张专辑讲述了爱、死亡和毒品，并强烈呼吁反抗现代社会的物质主义、谎言和偶像崇拜。在接受斯宾塞·科恩哈伯(Spencer Kornhaber)为《大西洋月刊》(The Atlantic Magazine)所做的采访时，Sufjan将《The Ascension》与他之前的作品进行了比较，他说:“我已经改变了，我老了，厌世了，我累坏了，我已不再抱幻想，我是一个脾气坏的人。在早期唱片有很多批判性质的东西;这一切都只是隐藏在快乐的外表之下，但我天生是个悲观主义者……在灵魂升天(Ascension)之时，我第一次真诚地面对我对这个世界的感觉。”

The Ascension is the eighth studio album by singer-songwriter Sufjan Stevens, his first solo LP since 2015’s Carrie & Lowell and his second 2020 release after the collaborative album Aporia with Lowell Brams.

It was announced on June 30, 2020, along with its 12-minute lead single and final track, “America,” which was released alongside “My Rajneesh,” a track cut from Carrie & Lowell that served as the B-side for the vinyl release of “America.”

In The Ascension, Stevens returns to the synthesizers and drum machines that defined 2010’s Age of Adz and 2017’s Planetarium. This was partly due to the practical implications of moving both his home and his recording studio from Brooklyn to a more remote location in the Catskills (upstate New York). With his wide range of string, percussion, woodwind and various other instruments in storage, he resorted to synthesizers and drum machines. As stated in an interview with Al Horner for The Guardian:

That’s why the nature of this record is so simple: I could only use things I could plug into a computer. My mind was not really in the folk idiom any more. I’d packed my guitars in the