A Beginner's Mind
| Sufjan Stevens & Angelo De Augustine
A Beginner's Mind
A Beginner's Mind is a collaborative album by American musicians Sufjan Stevens and Angelo De Augustine. The album was released by Asthmatic Kitty on September 24, 2021. After being teased by Asthmatic Kitty for several days, the album was formally announced on July 7, 2021, along with its track listing and two singles, "Reach Out" and "Olympus". Daniel Anum Jasper created the album's cover artwork. The album was met with widespread acclaim from music critics. -Wikipedia
Critic Reviews
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Pitchfork
With a collection of gentle duets inspired by great-to-iffy movies, the veteran songwriter and protégé uncover mythic resonances and ugly truths.
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XS Noize
Sufjan has always followed his muse through Electronica, Folk, Classical and Experimental genres scoring critical and widespread acclaim and mining gold with A Beginner's Mind. Along with De Augustine Stevens delivers the heartfelt and breathtaking, do not miss this release.
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Paste Magazine
Sufjan Stevens & Angelo De Augustine Find Abundant Beauty in Movies on A Beginner's Mind.
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Consequence Sound
Stevens’s latest collaboration is a folksy return to form and skillful synthesis of his abilities.
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The Irish Times
exceptional, empathic call to arms for the broken.
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Swim Into The Sound
These songs give us entire worlds to escape into, even if just for a few minutes at a time. It’s an exercise in empathy, but it also ladders up to some greater understanding of the universe. The concepts of grief, love, longing, and loss are practically too big for words, but maybe if you look at them from enough perspectives, you begin to see pieces of the bigger picture.
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UNF Spinnaker
This album is the culmination of the beautiful work of both Stevens and De Augustine and is an overall atmospheric album for any listener.
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PopMatters
Sufjan Stevens is taking aim on A Beginner’s Mind with catchy alt-folk that soothes the ear while placing bitter contents below the surface.
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ACRN
A Beginner’s Mind adds to the great musical legacy of Sufjan Stevens, and provides a great introduction to Angelo De Augustine. Is this album as great as Illinois or A Sun Came? No, but I feel that people will remember this album greatly with it’s interesting concept and the inclusion of another talented vocalist.
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Spectrum Culture
At 14 tracks and a few missteps, the album could be trimmed slightly, but the pair’s first full-length collaboration shows both artists bringing the best out of each other.
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Stuff
The songs were like dreams, fairytales – unexpected and utterly idiosyncratic.
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Beats Per Minute
A Beginner’s Mind proves the two are not only capable of making beautiful music as a duo, but bodes well for their solo work to come — it’s yet another captivating plot point in their overarching narratives.
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mxdwn Music
A Beginner’s Mind is an innovative collection of ideas inspired by films. The tracks are full of emotion and insightful perspectives that will challenge the listener. They open new perspectives on classic films, as well as draws out the morals behind many of these films, from “Reach Out,” where ideas of companionship and the need for human connection are explored, to “Cimmerian Shade,” where they change the perspective of a film. These concepts allow the listener to ponder the importance of the morals behind the films and experience the emotion of the characters in each story allowing the audience to connect with these characters through a new means, music.
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Sputnik Music
While the album might not ask many questions, the lyric sheet certainly does. Interrogating and otherwise cross-examining matters of faith, love and how best to live a life with compassion and authenticity is not new territory to Stevens at least, but beneath the almost easy-listening kindness of melodies and harmonies and plucks, this is an album in doubt and flux, hiding its reservations beneath superficial prettiness and elaborate conceits.
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Riff Magazine
A Beginner’s Mind is great for two reasons: It’s musically intimate and easily listenable, and additionally, it’s filled with references to so many films that there’s bound to be one you enjoyed. Though the lyrics aren’t overly conceptual, it deserves to be interpreted by these artists’ ability to write based on other works far before their time.
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The Arts Desk
An intriguing album of music inspired by film.
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Under the Radar Magazine
As art begets art, A Beginner’s Mind is both truly inspirational and a testament to what can come out of work-shopping with A-list performers.
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Exclaim!
A Beginner's Mind will not wow you with grand theatrics but it will have you on the edge of your seat nevertheless. In the last breaths of the album's final track "Lacrimae," Stevens and De Augustine come together to quietly ask, "…why must this life be so cruel and shadowed in the gloom?" and then the house lights come on.
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The Independent
This duo have reflected on their classic movie binge-watch in sweetly harmonised acoustic tranquility, like a modern day Simon & Garfunkel with PhDs in psychotherapy.
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Atwood Magazine
Sufjan Stevens and Angelo de Augustine become the latest musical act to demonstrate how isolation time can be spent wisely with their collaborative release, ‘A Beginner’s Mind.’
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Peanut Butter Pope
There’s that patronising pat-on-the-back again. But seriously, congratulations to Angelo De Augustine; he has actually helped to craft one of Sufjan Stevens’ best albums in ‘A Beginner’s Mind’ – it’s a pretty damn good Angelo De Augustine album too.
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The Needle Drop
Sufjan and Angelo make beautiful music together.
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Northern Transmissions
This is a collection of 14 good chamber-folk songs, which could soundtrack movies of their own. On some quiet nights, that’s more than enough. And when you’re looking for the Sufjan Stevens listening experiences that recalibrate your mind like it’s new again, well there’s never a bad time to pull out The Age of Adz.
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Spill Magazine
As a whole, this feels like a standard Sufjan Stevens album. This is not a bad thing – Stevens is one of the most prolific composers of our time and the album is filled with excellent production and lovely instrumentation. However, because he has shown his ability to oscillate between intimacy and excess on previous albums, this one feels a bit restrained by comparison.
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Indie Is Not A Genre
Sufjan Stevens has a unique distinction of being able to regularly innovate while covering familiar ground lyrically and melodically, and employing recurring chord structures and instrumentation. Here it results in yet another impressive offering, as Stevens, with De Augustine, manages to again be both familiar and novel.
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Evening Standard
Sufjan Stevens still loves a concept album, and this film-inspired set of songs works seamlessly.
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Hotpress
The contrast between Steven’s passion for b-movies and his mannered writing – between shlock and awesome – is striking. And a less accomplished artist might have run aground on those contradictions. Stevens and De Augustine, though, have produced a delicate and plaintive record that harks back to the mannered folk-pop with which Stevens was synonymous before moving on to ambient experimentation (this year’s Convocations) and downcast synth musings (2020’s The Ascension). If only all lockdown projects were as lovely.
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Vinyl Chapters
To commit to isolating together for a month, ritualistically watching a movie every night, and then writing music about it the following day, it’s evident that the pair share a mutual discipline in their creative approach. Combine this discipline with Sufjan and Angelo’s philosophical minds, distinct experimentalism, and artistic talent… you are then wowed with a spectacular album. A Beginner’s Mind is music production in it’s purest, most retrospective form.
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Stereoboard
As with the work of Grandaddy and (fellow Midwesterners) Bon Iver, this album is sometimes a little tediously sensitive, with breathy, meek singing that could either be described as an acquired taste or, to be a little less kind, weepy sex music. There is little doubting the quality of the compositions and integrity of the collaboration, but it simply doesn't grab the attention as well as its founding concept demands.
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AllMusic
A Beginner's Mind is intelligent and well-crafted, and will appeal to fans of either Stevens' or De Augustine's recent work, but it somehow feels less distinct than the music they create on their own.
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The Reflector
Stevens and De Augustine stayed true to their style of indie, avant-garde folk with a hint of electronica. The light guitar strums and their feather-light voices lured me into listening to the entirety of the album in one sitting — I felt as if all the songs were a personal lullaby.
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The Concordian
My favorite of the 14 songs is “Reach Out,” the opening for this soft and magical record. This truly healed my mental illness woes, revived all my dead houseplants and carried me through the week. Although the other tracks blend together and feel somewhat dull, this track is infinite and nearly perfect.
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Loud and Quiet
The moment which brings the album together, though, is its closer ‘Lacrimae’, which brings together the wider themes of the album – religion, mortality, a sense of being lost and alone – with a finality to it that’s both beautiful and terrifying: “I saw your eyes burn in the moonlight […] Lord, why must this life be so cruel? / And shadowed in the gloom?”
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In Review Online
A Beginner’s Mind is an impressive collaborative work, one that beautifully reclaims the sounds and emotional heft of Stevens’ mid-aughts folk efforts.
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For Folks Sake
As fascinating conceptually as the finished product is in reality, A Beginner’s Mind, continues to illustrate why Sufjan Stevens and Angelo De Augustine are the kind of artists that are never less than totally committed. The journeys they take seem to bare incredible fruit.
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The Winonan
As a whole, I think this album appeals to a very specific mood and a specific audience. Much like some of Sufjan’s other music, It could quite easily be relegated to non-notable background music if attention is not paid lyrically or sonically to the nuance of the writing and recording. I think this album deserves an evening off, a nice candle and some high quality speakers or headphones to get the full listening value.
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Thank Folk For That
Sufjan Stevens and Angelo De Augustine have served up a powerfully melodic and peaceful new project that is sure to be talked about for some time. Albums like this truly showcase Sufjan’s genius talent and make him stand out high amongst the rest of the indie folk community. We are very lucky to be graced with this beautiful music and another return to his incredible folk and singer /songwriter styles.
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The Ithacan
On “A Beginner’s Mind,” Sufjan Stevens and Angelo De Augustine spent a summer in the woods to create the perfect concept album.
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808Fever
'A Beginner's Mind' is a quality collaborative effort from Sufjan Stevens and Angelo De Augustine. Tackling themes of war, cruelties in life, self-discovery and fame was compelling and sonically delightful. This record was an enticing first venture into the folk genre and Sufjan and Angelo's discography.
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