"Don't do to me what you did to America, don't do to me what you did to yourself." Sufjan Stevens repeats that line like it's more a mantra than a chorus on "America," the 12-and-a-half-minute final track on his epic-scale 2020 album The Ascension. Just who is he pleading with and what have they done? He doesn't offer a clear answer, but the accumulated effect of these 15 songs is that Stevens is deeply troubled about the state of the world in the year 2020. The Ascension bears some small resemblance to his 2010 album The Age of Adz, both in its cool, sleek, and busy electronic surfaces and the profound angst that lurks amidst his dominant themes. Here, Stevens sees himself and the world around him caught up in a moral and spiritual crisis, a notion that's informed by his Christian faith as well as the shared vision of a culture that is coming apart at the seams, and more than anything, he wants to stop the world and get off. The weary litany of "Video Game" is a cry for some peace as the demands of others spin around him, "Die Happy" ominously suggests a need for relief at any cost, "Make Me an Offer I Cannot Refuse" finds him pleading with the Lord for an intervention that never seems to come, and the title track finds him cautiously pondering if the optimism of his earlier work (and his faith as a younger man) was honest or worthwhile. On The Ascension, Stevens spends 80 minutes wrestling with the need for love and succor (both romantic and divine) and the weight of a nation that's gone into free fall. While much of The Ascension seemingly concerns his own struggles and the role faith plays in them, it also reads as a mirror to the year 2020, a time when America seemed to be imploding in a way its people had never seen before. The internal and external tribulations dominating this music fit one another uncomfortably well; Stevens' pain is very much his own, but it also dovetails with the mood of a world that's as troubled as he seems to be. The Ascension ranks with Carrie & Lowell as his most personal and affecting work to date. ~ Mark Deming