Sufjan Stevens has released a new song called ‘America’.
It’s the first track to be unveiled from Stevens’ new album, The Ascension, which was announced earlier this week. You can watch a video for the 12-minute song above.
Stevens says that the foundations for his new album are "a call for personal transformation and a refusal to play along with the systems around us." He adds that ‘America’ is "a protest song against the sickness of American culture in particular."
The track was originally written six years ago, while he was working on 2015 album Carrie & Lowell. He re-recorded it two years ago when he started out on writing for The Ascension.
"I was dumbfounded by the song when I first wrote it," he says. "Because it felt vaguely mean-spirited and miles away from everything else on Carrie & Lowell. So I shelved it."
"But when I dug up the demo a few years later I was shocked by its prescience. I could no longer dismiss it as angry and glib. The song was clearly articulating something prophetic and true, even if I hadn’t been able to identify it at the time. That’s when I saw a clear path toward what I had to do next."
Asthmatic Kitty will release The Ascension on September 25, 2020.
