In quite a severe contrast, the less punchy yet more commercially successful ‘Run Away With Me’ takes a quick musical and lyrical respite from the heavy subject matter of the album to replicate the light fantasy of modern pop culture. Opening with the fiery track ‘Make Me An offer I Cannot Refuse’, an exasperated demand for a sign from God in response to the current state of the world, Stevens sets the scene for a more pushy and angsty take on the chaos of humanity than some of his previous work. Talking to The Guardian on its release, he discusses how his mind was not in the same folk sphere of his previous break-through successes such as Illinois and Carrie & Lowell: “ I’d packed up my guitars in the storage and I think mentally I’d packed away that aesthetic, too.” The album also manifests a far cry from the introspective lyrics often associated with Stevens, instead representing his desire to respond to the volatile political climate and hostile world of the internet. With access only to a drum machine and a computer, the rest of his instruments being in storage after moving, Sufjan Stevens’ September album The Ascension is perhaps his most ‘simple’ and electropop-esque yet.
