Sufjan Stevens
Carrie & Lowell: 10th Anniversary Edition
★★★★★
ASTHMATIC KITTY
Following 2010’s The Age Of Adz, Sufjan Stevens’s hectic, electronica-infused nod to outsider artist Royal Robertson, Carrie & Lowell returned to sparer, much more intimate songs. Part sparked by his absentee mother Carrie’s succumbing to stomach cancer in 2012 – and also paying tribute to stepfather Lowell, who mailed a 10-year-old Stevens Nick Drake cassettes – it still stands as an unfailingly beautiful and poetic meditation on loss, childhood and adult faith in crisis.
Listening to the bonus disc demo of Death With Dignity, we realise the LP version’s fingerpicked guitar adds a higher-register instance to its ornate lattice, while the demo for Fourth Of July, Stevens’ loving, but unflinching portrait of his mother on her deathbed, stretches to 14 dream-like minutes of between-worlds farewell. Stevens worried Carrie & Lowell was indulgent, but it remains vital, universal, profoundly human.
Carrie & Lowell: 10th Anniversary Edition is out May 30 on Asthmatic Kitty.
ORDER: Amazon | Rough Trade
Track listing:
Death With Dignity
Should Have Known Better
All Of Me Wants All Of You
Drawn To The Blood
4th Of July
The Only Thing
Carrie & Lowell
Eugene
John My Beloved
No Shade In The Shadow Of The Cross
Blue Bucket Of Gold
Death With Dignity (Demo)
Should Have Known Better (Demo)
Eugene (Demo)
The Only Thing (Demo)
Mystery Of Love (Demo)
Wallowa Lake Monster (Version 2)
4th Of July (Version 4)
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