SUFJAN STEVENS: The Ascension (Asthmatic Kitty)
Verdict: Rises to the occasion
FLEET FOXES: Shore (Anti-)
Verdict: Back in perfect harmony
Rating: 
DIANA KRALL: This Dream Of You (Verve)
Verdict: Standard with a twist
Rating: 
You could never accuse Sufjan Stevens of lacking ambition.
The Detroit singer-songwriter first caused a stir when he announced his intention to write an entire album for each of America’s 50 states.
He later admitted the idea was a gimmick and gave up after Michigan and Illinois.
But he has since branched out into film scores, being Oscar-nominated for his work on Luca Guadagnino’s Call Me By Your Name, and has built on his folk foundations to assemble a back catalogue that includes Christmas albums, electronic pop and lavishly orchestrated chamber music.
You could never accuse Sufjan Stevens (pictured) of lacking ambition. His latest LP, The Ascension, is rooted in elegant electronics
His latest LP, The Ascension, is rooted in elegant electronics.
His first solo effort in five years, it’s the follow-up to 2015’s Carrie & Lowell, a heartbreaking homage to his troubled mother Carrie, who died in 2012, and his stepfather Lowell Brams.
Stevens, 45, might have shelved his 50 states project but his homeland is still uppermost in his thoughts.
He calls The Ascension an ‘indictment of a world crumbling around us’ but his tone, despite apocalyptic moments, is far from gloomy: he sees these impressionistic songs as a ‘roadmap’ to happier times.
The album was made at home — he now lives in upstate New York — using old analogue synthesisers, a drum machine and a laptop.
He employed a similar template on this year’s Aporia, an instrumental LP created with stepfather Brams, but the mix here is richer, the tunes more accessible.
Make Me An Offer I Cannot Refuse is one of several tracks that use simple, everyday phrases to try to provide some uplift.
Sugar, by the singer’s own admission, is ‘a string of clichés’ but that doesn’t diminish a song about respecting one another that is boosted by a dreamy synth melody.
The gloom of 2020 is never far from the surface — ‘I’ve lost my faith in everything’ runs a line in Tell Me You Love Me — but hope prevails, with Stevens using spiritual metaphors to yearn for ‘a new communion’ on Run Away With Me.
There are sly nods to pop’s past.
Video Game namechecks Depeche Mode’s Personal Jesus, and a line in Goodbye To All That — ‘here I am, alone in my car’ — could be a reference to Gary Numan’s Cars.
The music, too, contains echoes of the synth-pop pioneers of the 1980s.
Some numbers employ clattering beats and cut-up vocals but these rough edges are softened by guests, including The National’s Bryce Dessner and two of Sufjan’s touring band, guitarist Casey Foubert and drummer James McAlister, who recorded their parts remotely.
At 80 minutes, The Ascension is a long listen — an emerging trait with albums released during lockdown.
It’s one thing being ambitious, but Stevens can allow his enthusiasm to get the better of him.
A few edits wouldn’t go amiss, but this elegiac tour de force could still deliver the wider audience he deserves.
Another feature of pop in lockdown has been the release of albums at short notice. Taylor Swift’s Folklore and Alicia Keys’ Alicia arrived with little warning.
Now Fleet Foxes have followed suit with Shore — announced last Monday and released on Tuesday to tie in with the autumn equinox.
The Seattle folk-rockers have lost momentum since their self-titled 2008 debut became a UK Top Three hit and furnished TV choirmaster Gareth Malone with a mantra to die for in White Winter Hymnal.
Now Fleet Foxes have followed suit with Shore — announced last Monday and released on Tuesday to tie in with the autumn equinox
The band’s last album, Crack-Up, was convoluted and hard to love.
This is a welcome return to form. A celebration of lost musical heroes, including Bill Withers and John Prine, both of whom died this year, it is billed by singer Robin Pecknold as ‘phase one’ of a larger project.
‘It doesn’t make sense to wait until next spring or summer to release this,’ he says.
‘I’d rather share it now and work on more music. With touring off the table for now, we’re going to use that time to make nine more songs.’
Tracing the quintet’s West Coast lineage back to the folk-rock of The Byrds and the highway songs of the Eagles, the jangling guitars and honeyed harmonies of old are back.
There’s ornate piano on Featherweight and fluttery jazz trumpet on Going-To-The-Sun Road.
Pecknold salutes Jimi Hendrix, Otis Redding and Marvin Gaye on Sunblind, while the title track pays tribute to Prine and U.S. indie musician David Berman, who died last year.
‘Now the quarter moon is out,’ concludes Pecknold as the album ends, whetting the appetite for the phases of Shore still to come.
Diana Krall dips once again into the Great American Songbook on This Dream Of You, a new album put together from sessions with the late American jazz producer Tommy LiPuma shortly before his death, at 80, in 2017.
It’s business as usual for the most part, with Krall, 55, performing impeccably.
Diana Krall dips once again into the Great American Songbook on This Dream Of You, a new album put together from sessions with the late American jazz producer Tommy LiPuma
The singer and pianist paid tribute to Nat King Cole on 1996’s All For You, and she does so again on mellow ballad But Beautiful, club-style jazz number Just You, Just Me and That’s All.
Krall compares the record to a movie, one bookended by But Beautiful (the overture) and a lively Singin’ In The Rain (the end title), but the unexpected plot twists arrive elsewhere.
Don’t Smoke In Bed is deeper and darker, and the title track a clever transformation of a track from Bob Dylan’s 2009 LP Together Through Life.
Dylan sang the original as a piece of Tex-Mex-flavoured Americana. Krall turns it into a nostalgic bar-room lament, with her uncle Randall Krall on accordion.
TIME FOR A BIT OF RIO RAP!
Brazilian superstar Anitta continues her bid for a global breakthrough by teaming up with rappers Cardi B and Myke Towers and producer Ryan Tedder on her new single Me Gusta.
Brazilian superstar Anitta (pictured) continues her bid for a global breakthrough
The Rio singer brought the carnival spirit to Nile Rodgers’ Meltdown festival last year, and she sings in English and Spanish on a favela funk track powered by samba drums.
No wonder Madonna sought her out for a cameo on last year’s Madame X album.
Just seven months after his fifth album, Changes, Justin Bieber launches a ‘new era’ with his latest single Holy.
A gospel-flavoured duet with Chance The Rapper, the song allows the latter to show off his love of Spanish football (‘when they get messy, go lefty like Lionel Messi’).
Sam Smith is also back, previewing next month’s Love Goes album with a single, Diamonds, that’s an acerbic kiss-off to a gold-digging former lover; while John Legend’s bluesy ballad Wild has been transformed into a classic house track by Milanese production trio Meduza.
And one month ahead of what would have been his 80th birthday, John Lennon’s 1973 single Mind Games has been remixed by engineer Paul Hicks.
Taken from next month’s solo anthology Gimme Some Truth, the new take is cleaner- sounding but otherwise stays true to the original.