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Ask That God is the fourth studio album by Australian electronic music duo Empire of the Sun, released on 26 July 2024 through EMI Music Australia and Capitol Records. The album was preceded by the singles "Changes", "Music on the Radio", and "Cherry Blossom", and also includes their 2023 collaboration with Nick Littlemore's project Pnau, "AEIOU".[4]
At the 2024 ARIA Music Awards, Luke Steele, Nick Littlemore and Peter Mayes were nominated for Best Engineered Release and Best Produced Release.[5]
A deluxe edition of the album was released on 24 January 2025; it features two new tracks.[3]
The group began working on their fourth album between late 2016 and early 2017 after releasing Two Vines, before announcing a hiatus. In April 2024, they began recording the album, which included recordings they had kept for the past seven years: from 3 April 2017 to 26 June 2024. It was done by the end of June 2024. Littlemore stated that the duo was "blessed with" the album and that it "represents the greatest shift in consciousness our world has ever seen and that's reflected in the music". The album, the group's fourth, was released on 26 July 2024.[6]Luke Steele likened the second single "Music on the Radio" to "a teenager rebelling against his imaginary emotions".[7] Littlemore said "There might have been as many as 1,200 songs that we wrote in that time to get to the 12 we have here."[8]
Ask That God received a score of 82 out of 100 on review aggregator Metacritic based on five critics' reviews, which the website categorised as "universal acclaim".[9]Record Collector stated that "while their familiar stargazing disco again dominates, the songwriting is at its sharpest as fresh influences add bite".[14] Neil Z. Yeung of AllMusic wrote that it "feels like both a return to form and a retrospective journey through their sonic evolution" and a "return to the blissful, body-moving spirit of Empire of the Sun's first two classics".[10]
Damien Morris of The Observer said that "like their three previous projects, this one contains at least two elite tunes ('Changes', 'Cherry Blossom') interspersed with effervescent yet evanescent second-tier tracks ('Revolve', 'Music on the Radio', 'Ask That God') and smoothly produced non-bangers (everything else)".[13] Ben Hogwood of MusicOMH remarked that Littlemore and Steele "find their familiar chemistry in providing escapism in sun kissed pop to sing and dance to".[12] Lily Blakeney-Edwards of Clash called it "a journey in every sense providing enough density and style changes to keep listeners intrigued to the very end".[11]
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Empire of the Sun
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