Sufjan Stevens

Ezra Craker 10-20-2023

Sufjan Stevens performing at the Sydney Opera House during the Vivid Festival.  Joshua Windsor / Alamy

It’s clear why fans created the once popular but now defunct Facebook page,“Is This Sufjan Stevens Song Gay Or Just About God?” But Stevens’ music has never been either gay or about God. It’s indivisibly gay and about God.

Da’Shawn Mosley 9-25-2020

The album is titled The Ascension but, I’ve got to be honest, Sufjan Stevens’ latest masterwork has me feeling the lowest I’ve felt about this country since the start of quarantine.

The Editors 6-08-2015
Image via tovovan/shutterstock.com

Image via tovovan/shutterstock.com

It’s hard to overlook the peppy pink pig who appeared on the cover of our June issue, but maybe you missed the lyrical beauty of Senior Associate Editor Julie Polter’s review of Sufjan Stevens’ newest album, or Eboo Patel’s surprising lesson on what Thomas Jefferson’s 1764 copy of Islam’s holy book can tell us about the 2016 elections. The June issue taught us how to stop funding what we hate, how a housing-first model saved the life of a homeless transgender woman, and how prison guards are earning degrees alongside inmates.

Below, read our top 10 quotes from the June 2015 issue of Sojourners.

Julie Polter 5-06-2015

BIBLICAL LAMENT includes both pleas to God for help and mournful dirges. Sometimes they are rooted in individual travails and grief, other times in anguish for those crushed by injustice or war.

The psalmist and the prophets dig deep into visceral images of bodily suffering—and stretch up, out, yearning to find symbols and metaphors in nature that might capture the mercy and presence of a God who, the psalmist isn’t afraid to say, is sometimes a bit elusive.

Sufjan Stevens. Black and white version of image via Tammy Lo/flickr.com

Sufjan Stevens. Black and white version of image via Tammy Lo/flickr.com

Sufjan Stevens’ newest album, Carrie & Lowell (out now), is a heartbreaking meditation on personal grief. It’s also joyful, baffling, and delicately mundane. 

In the spirit of a listening party, a few of us sat down to play through the album, sharing liner notes and meditations on the songs that grabbed each of us. Conclusion: it's really, really good. Stream Carrie & Lowell here, and listen along with us below.

 

Death With Dignity” — Tripp Hudgins, ethnomusicologist, Sojourners contributor, blogger at Anglobaptist

Tripp: I love the first song of an album. I think of it as the introduction to a possible new friend. “Where The Streets Have No Name” on U2’s Joshua Tree or “Signs of Life” on Pink Floyd’s Momentary Lapse of Reason, that first track can be the thesis statement to a sonic essay.

So, when I get a new album — even in this day of digital albums or collections of singles — a first track can make or break an album for me. I sat down and listened attentively to “Death With Dignity.” It does not disappoint. With it Stevens introduces the subject of the album — his grief around troubled relationship with his mother and her death — as well as the sonic palate he will use throughout the album.

Simple guitar work, layered voicing, and a little synth, the album is musically sparse. The tempo reminds me of movies from the nineteen sixties or seventies where the action takes place over a long road trip.

Catherine Woodiwiss: I was thinking road trip, too. There’s real motion musically, which, given a claustrophobic theme and circular lyrics, is a thankful point of release. It’s a generous act, or maybe an avoidant one — he could have made us sit tight and watch, and he doesn’t quite do it.

Julie Polter: This isn’t a road movie, but the reference to that era of films just made me think of Cat Stevens’ soundtrack for Harold and Maude, especially “Trouble.” (This album is one-by-one bringing back to me other gentle songs of death and duress and all the songs I listen to when I want to cry).

Brandon Hook 12-13-2012
Andrea Michele Piacquadio / Shutterstock

Photo: Santa Claus listening to music. Andrea Michele Piacquadio / Shutterstock

Christmas is less than two weeks away, and even though most of us probably started cranking the Christmas tunes the day after Thanksgiving, here’s a look at some of this year’s best Christmas compilations so you don’t overplay, say, Amy Grant’s classic 1983 Christmas Collection.

Onleilove Alston 4-01-2010
The BQE, by Sufjan Stevens. Asthmatic Kitty Records.
Jeannie Choi 10-01-2009

In an age of quick and easy fame, where reality stars are more popular than actual actors, it's always refreshing to find an artist quietly making genuinely beautiful music with little to no regard for fame.

Jeannie Choi 6-08-2009
About a month ago, I had the pleasure of meeting Rev.