Sufjan Stevens’ Carrie & Lowell

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qx1s_3CF07k

Lyrics have allusions to Sufjan’s drug problem, <i>The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe</i>, and Valley of the Dolls. I’m super excited for the album.

yeah i'm ready for this

suf has a drug problem?

tyler beat me to the question I was going to ask. I must have missed that story.

suf has a drug problem?

Yeah :(

Pitchfork interview has a few details:

http://pitchfork.com/features/interviews/9595-true-myth-a-conversation-with-sufjan-stevens/

Pitchfork: Considering you had a distant relationship, were you at all surprised that her death hit you so hard?

SS: Yeah. In the moment, I was stoic and phlegmatic and practical, but in the months following I was manic and frantic and disparaging and angry. They always talk about the science of bereavement, and how there is a measurable pattern and cycle of grief, but my experience was lacking in any kind of natural trajectory. It felt really sporadic and convoluted. I would have a period of rigorous, emotionless work, and then I would be struck by deep sadness triggered by something really mundane, like a dead pigeon on the subway track. Or my niece would point out polka-dotted tights at the playground, and I would suffer some kind of cosmic anguish in public. It's weird.

I was so emotionally lost and desperate for what I could no longer pursue in regard to my mother, so I was looking for that in other places. At the time, part of me felt that I was possessed by her spirit and that there were certain destructive behaviors that were manifestations of her possession.

Pitchfork: How so?

SS: Oh man, it's so hard to describe what was going on. It's almost like the force, or the matrix, or something: I started to believe that I was genetically, habitually, chemically predisposed to her pattern of destruction. I think a lot of the acting-out was rebellion, or maybe it was a way for me to… ah, this is so fucked up, I should probably go to therapy.

In lieu of her death, I felt a desire to be with her, so I felt like abusing drugs and alcohol and fucking around a lot and becoming reckless and hazardous was my way of being intimate with her. But I quickly learned that you don't have to be incarcerated by suffering, and that, in spite of the dysfunctional nature of your family, you are an individual in full possession of your life. I came to realize that I wasn't possessed by her, or incarcerated by her mental illness. We blame our parents for a lot of shit, for better and for worse, but it's symbiotic. Parenthood is a profound sacrifice.

Moreover, from the single:

I'll drive that stake through the center of my heart
Lonely vampire
Inhaling its fire
I’m chasing the dragon too far

well i guess that's not too subtle

That Pitchfork interview is amazing, got really affected by it

I'm disappointed this is not called "Oregon? Here's more again!"

This new album is way better than I expected a Sufjan Stevens album in 2015 to be

It's kind of perfect, plumbs a new depth of sadness, I listened to it a couple times and realized it was ruining my life and had to turn it off. Real end-of-world, end-of-life music. I've never really been a fan of his lyrics until now but this is too good, too fucked up

that songs posted here reminds me of Bon Iver and that's not a good sign.

(twee!)

Never expected to like a Sufjan album in 2015, also never expected to see people still use "twee" as shorthand for "spare arrangement"

it's the vocals

fgti, in case you want to read along and be utterly destroyed: http://asthmatickitty.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/AKR099_CarrieLowell_iTunes.pdf

Oversharing perhaps but I did read along and got so depressed by the second listen that I had to take a mental health day :/ I'm not the only one either, I chatted to a couple other people yesterday for whom this record had had the same effect, utterly devastating shit and I hope one day I might be able to listen to it with pleasure

this album is so sad

No Shade in the Shadow of the Cross has that hyper-exposed quality like Blue, but it's sadder. Don't know if I can handle an album of this.

"The Only Thing" is an early highlight.

From my first listen the subject matter + vocal style combo makes me think of a quieter version of Lost in the Trees' A Church That Fits Our Needs, probably the best chamber-folkish album of the last five years

Man, you all are making me want to hear this ASAP. I haven't yet, but Michigan, Illinois and Seven Swans are all wonderful and I'm a true believer that Sufjan is a genius.

This is his best album since Seven Swans. It's very bleak but I'm excited to hear him going back to his roots both music-wise and lyrics-wise. A hard pill to swallow but makes me excited about where he goes from here, seems like a do-over album and it feels devastating because he is letting go of everything in here. According to the interviews he had never been this confessional before.

It feels refreshing coming from him, I thought I wouldn't care about him again as I wasn't a big fan of his output post-seven swans (ok Illinoise and Adz had some great songs but they also had some very embarassing moments)

What I meant was: I like this album alright but I'm on board with everyone in here, I'm not in such a miserable mood that I'd want it as a companion at this very moment. Makes me interested in his music again and glad to have him back but I'd rather see where he goes from here. Maybe by the time winter comes it will become my favorite album this year who knows.

Also I've always loved his 'darker' songs like 'John Wayne Gacy', 'Holland', 'A good man is hard to find'... it's nice to have an album filled with these.

Gacy and Holland are two of my very favorites of his.

"Come on Feel the Illinoise!" the song never gets old, it's like seeing a new color

yeah I've always loved the more vibrant, Charlie Brown-esque tunes, stuff like "Jacksonville", "Chicago", "The Man of Metropolis Steals Our Hearts", and so on

that said Seven Swans is really great!

me i was down for his crazy noisy fusion thing

but i also like the idea of a sufjan record that's just a dank pretty acoustic pit

i wish this arrangement was recorded... the pitch-bent whammy power chords that launch into the chorus...... *smooches*

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kfPmInRLts&spfreload=10

i love how emo this album is

me i was down for his crazy noisy fusion thing

― insufficiently familiar with xgau's work to comment intelligently (BradNelson)

The album it relates to the most is Seven Swans (it's an even more stripped down sound than Seven Swans, actually) but it also feels like a direct sequel to Age of Adz. It might be how much his producing skills have improved since the early albums but it has the same sort of lyrical buildup and emotional outbursts that Illinoise and Adz had (Michigan and Seven Swans didn't pull that trick often) only in a different, minimal setting. I can easily imagine him maximizing the sounds of some of these live with a full band.

this album is awesome and devastating. it shouldn't, however, be listened to whilst operating heavy machinery.

sweet vocal filters throughout

"What's the point of singing songs / if they'll never even hear you?"

jesus

Should Have Known Better

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJJT00wqlOo

It's kind of perfect, plumbs a new depth of sadness, I listened to it a couple times and realized it was ruining my life and had to turn it off. Real end-of-world, end-of-life music. I've never really been a fan of his lyrics until now but this is too good, too fucked up

― got a long list of ilxors (fgti), Monday, March 9, 2015 7:16 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

otm, it's basically a new Elliott Smith album. someone in one of the ES threads on here said there's "no way out" of his music, i think the same is true of Carrie & Lowell... whether you've lost your parents, or simply waiting... a universal terror. Sufjan is a much more consistent lyricist than Smith though imo, who was brilliant and nuanced ("Pitseleh") just as often as he crossed the line into unformed teenage tantrums (any time he whines "you're such a fucking joke" or "such a fucking pro"). I think we're going to see a lot of artists new and old coming out with records like this in the next couple years, people want sad acoustic guitar music about the end of the world and the inevitable deaths of our loved ones. man. this record is really, really scary too, because it's only a matter of time before everyone has to go through this. earth sucks

otm

I'm writing from my mom's hospital room. She's dying from stomach cancer. It's awful. Her gargling will haunt me. It's terrible. Just terrible.

I think she would like this album too.

I don't view this album as entirely sad. I think there's an underlying optimism that peaks through.

I'm sorry, Allen.

this record is fucking devastating

I've been so taken with it that I've gone back to revisit all his prev records. They are still largely not-for-me but certain tracks I guess I'd missed in the morass, stuff like "Predatory Wasp" I'm like wow how did I miss how good this song was?

Predatory Wasp is one of his very best I think, always liked this performance where it builds into a stormy outro even if that's a bit too long
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8nBYZiSc9s

oh yeah "predatory wasp"! i forgot about that one

could probably not get through all of illinois at this point

i could take or leave illinois but michigan is still one of my fav records

I think this could be his best to be honest...It'll be interesting to see if the public reacts to this in the same way they did to "Illinois"

How did the public reacted to Illinois? In Mexico he's very niche so I've no idea, but Illinois was an ambitious pop album, sort of Flaming Lips gone folk. I like this one better but it's hard to see a great deal of people getting excited about this sort of low key album.

illinois was way celebrated

This is amazing. So harrowing, so perfect for my mood tonight. #AlwaysInOurHeartsZaynMalik

It almost certainly doesn't need to be 80 minutes long, but there's a lot to like here.

I don't mind someone who pokes their head out once every presidential administration making maxed-out albums like this but yes the songs all kinda blend together. I agree that "My Rajneesh" is better than anything on here. also I think Age of Adz accomplishes most of what this one goes for in a more effective way. but its still pretty good

props to Sufjan for (acc to his publicist) snubbing Rick Rubin a few years back. smart man!

nope - got it - the BoC track I hear in "Die Happy" is "'84 Pontiac Dream":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jf5NP-WLGTw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDcgYOOSATY

to think i was acting like a believer / when i was just angry and depressed

😪

i hear a similar style to "84 pontiac dream" in "die happy" but i'm not sure it's a direct rip

i think i'd be into this album much more if it were half the length - unlike illinois and age of adz it just doesn't have enough ideas to sustain its very lengthy runtime

yeah "rip" was a bit of a hot take, but it was definitely a surprise

yeah, so far i like it but am a little disappointed. after "my rajneesh" i was expecting him to drop a masterpiece.

it's much more pared down than i expected. it's not at all maximalist like age of adz.

the title track is really magnificent to be honest. there is more here for a listener like me -- someone who loves the confessional side of carrie & lowell, who "relates" to him -- than someone interested in the sonic inventiveness of age of adz

age of adz is my favourite not only musically but lyrically too. there's a few themes that run through that album (difficulties with communication in relationships, the apocalypse, royal robertson, his own health struggles,etc.) that he ties together wonderfully. it's not as explicitly confessional as carrie & lowell but it's the one i 'relate' the most to

on the other hand this one feels unusually impersonal for him a lot of the time

he talks about that in this interview actually:
https://www.thefader.com/2020/09/25/sufjan-stevens-the-ascension-interview-2020-asthmatic-kitty

I was definitely less focused on myself and my person, my story, my narrative. I got rid of all the idioms of narrative folk songwriting. I wanted things to feel more universal and more generic, in a way. I embraced the use of cliches and catchphrases and idioms and colloquialisms. All that stuff started to like become the impetus for the songs, the meanings behind the songs. I kind of wanted to speak to the lowest common denominator. I wanted the songs to keep moving and be simple on the surface and to feel accessible in a way, as much as I'm able to do it because like even at my most poppiest, I'm a far cry from what's being played on the radio right now. That was all really, really intentional.

I don't feel like I'm generally participating in the pop vernacular too much — I feel like I'm kind of outside of that practice, so it felt really exciting to embrace it and make it the central part of the characteristic in terms of the lyric writing. I've been making records for so long and I've been producing so much work and writing so much original music. After a while I got exhausted by sort of my habits and tropes. I felt like I needed to get out of myself.

I also gave myself a license to not have any new ideas. Sometimes I feel like you just need to appropriate an old idea or preexisting one and make it your own. The songwriting was a process of appropriating cliches and commands and catchphrases and building them into a larger, deeper, more meaningful, more philosophical conversation about our world and crisis and politics and love. All that stuff is there, and obviously it's my point of view and my imprint and authorship is all over this because I did everything, but in spite of all that, I wanted to take myself out of it narratively and think more about the listener, the consumer.

i don't think the end result of that was particularly interesting though and it mostly just feels like he's avoiding his strengths as a writer. like, he hasn't really managed to wring any depth out of those sort of cliches as much as he's tried, and they don't have the sort of emotional backing here that's what can make those sort of cliches work in a more pop context. i find it most engaging lyrically when he slips back into a more typically sufjan mode such as on the title track.

I could be approaching this album from entirely the wrong angle, but it seems to me like the production choices here are aiming for and not quite nailing that 'fragile threads of melody float on the surface of a violently churning sea of electronic noise' aesthetic, that was executed so well on Low's past two albums. That said, I'm still feeling my way through, and I find new details to appreciate as I move between different listening environments. Last night in the car, it was the noise gate closing hard to cut off the reverb tails on the "Come on baby give me some sugar" background vox and create this heady fake tremolo effect; then on the speakers at home, the tuned percussion (or tuned percussion synth patch) playing long tumbling lines under the vocal refrain in "America" when it returns around the 5:45 mark.

I still think "My Rajneesh" is a better song than a lot of what made the album, and also has a WAY more interesting arrangement that pairs the post-dubstep air raid siren electronic stuff with the more classically Sufjanesque palette of choral vox, recorder, brass fanfare, glockenspiel ostinatos, etc.

Really digging the Kid A-meets-Double Negative vibe of "Landslide"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltH3rI-G4n8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9ymTg1V40A

new folk album A Beginner's Mind out 24 September, in collaboration with Angelo De Augustine, who seems to be something of a protege of his?

pleasant songs, very much in line with the sound of Carrie & Lowell. surprisingly soon for a new song-based album of his too

oh my god the cover art is so bad

cover art is by Daniel Anuum Jasper, Ghanaian movie poster painter: https://dandano.org/2019/06/17/short-wave-daniel-anum-jasper-pioneer-of-hand-painted-movie-posters-ep-002/

lmao ok I was gonna say that style seemed familiar

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjHG25QwYeg

he's back in lush singer-songwriter mode for javelin out october 6. the lead single is fine though i hope he can do better than just 'fine' when the ascension & a beginner's mind were both pretty much just that

I liked the single better than “fine”

yeah, this is really nice

it is lovely and all but i think it's just he has to do more than this to really move me these days - it's a good sufjan song but not a great one. he's never sounded quite as lush as this before but it all feels very familiar, he's really honing in on the idea of his sound i guess. it reminds me most of all delighted people which fits given the cover art, but even then it's the idea of all delighted people more than what it actually is?

also ultimately i like him more when he gets weirder!

i hope he's going to tour this one because it's been so long

apparently there's one 8 minute epic on this so i'll look forward to that

it's not as specific as his absolute best work, but still a great, swoon-worthy melody and i always like it when he perks up with this kind of rollicking 6/8 feel (going all the way back to "the upper peninsula"...tho that one might be a straight 3/4 now that i think about it)

he's confirmed to be not touring which is a shame but i can hardly blame him for not wanting to given the state of things

too bad, i got one of those woodcut maps of the great lakes that twitter keeps advertising and was looking forward to throwing it at him onstage

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLeCIRC4taY

I had no idea he was so sick he can't even walk.

What to know about Sufjan Stevens’s Guillain-Barré syndrome diagnosis

https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2023/09/20/sufjan-stevens-guillain-barre-syndrome/

Yeah, his statement was pretty understated considering he says it may take him up to a year before he can walk again xp

ok first track on javelin totally delivers

great album, definitely a 'return to form', feels like his entire career all mixed together. idk if anything here is quite up with the best he's ever done and it isn't emotionally devastating in the way that c&l is or as directly moving as i find age of adz, but "shit talk" is pretty wonderful and "goodbye evergreen" feels like what the ascension was reaching for but didn't quite achieve. the pre-release tracks that felt a bit by-numbers work much better in the context of the album even though i'm pretty familiar with his bag of tricks on those - some of the others are a bit bolder or cover new combinations of old ideas, so the more familiar tracks fit in nicely.

also feels like a continuation of the c&l tour (very welcome!) with the lush acoustic arrangements that often slowly morph into something more electronic. just unfortunately lacking in wild keyboard solos

yeah i think this is probably second only to adz in his discography, a total triumph

https://www.instagram.com/p/CyEELYnOOg0/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

I have been carrying around an indescribable grief since this happened, and a feeling of inability to “talk about it”, out of respect for Sufjan’s privacy. I’d known Evans for fifteen years and it cannot be understated as to what a brilliant friend he was, just the greatest man I’ve ever known. All the songs I’ve heard from Javelin have had this added weight with the knowledge of this and I feel enormous relief that Sufjan has elected to mention it publicly. RIP Evans I love you

absolutely heartbreaking

truly gutting. the album is beautiful. sorry for your loss, fgti

oh damn, he's had an incredibly rough year.

sorry for your loss fgti

that's dreadful, so much loss

the rough trade version has bonus disc with 5 previously unreleased songs that all appear to be from the c&l sessions, from when he was trying to make an oregon album

Absolutely beautiful album and yes, it seems to reference various moments from his discography, but sound- and arrangement-wise it reminds me of the All Delighted People EP and the second set of Christmas songs the most. And ufo's comparison to the C&L live versions is spot on, too.

"Will Anybody Ever Love Me", "Shit Talk" and "Goodbye Evergreen" keep turning me into a sobbing mess during my commute, especially now that he has shared the heartbreaking circumstances surrounding the record.

i've been going back to the ascension a bit now and it's frustrating because it feels very close to being very good but just doesn't quite get there. the main problem is just it's too long! he manages to get a fair bit of variety out of a limited set of synths & drum machines but illinois & age of adz could get away with being 80 minutes long by having maximalist sound palettes bursting with ideas which the ascension just doesn't have enough to sustain interest for that long. the songs don't consistently hit the same highs he usually does (though "make me an offer i cannot refuse" and "tell me you love me" are top tier), but the only real dud is "video game" having a really underwritten chorus (it would have been so good with a proper chorus there but no!).

he kept talking about rhythm nation as a key influence in interviews and i finally do hear that in the drum programming, but the issue is that the drums here don't hit anywhere near as hard, so it doesn't give the same feeling at all. i wish he had gone for hard hitting new jack swing drums, that would have been really cool. i feel a bit better about the lyrics now than i did 3 years ago but attempting to wring depth out of cliche still isn't really playing to his strengths.

if it had been cut down to the following i think it would have been a very good album even though it still wouldn't be his best:

make me an offer i cannot refuse
run away with me
tell me you love me
die happy
ativan
landslide
gilgamesh
sugar
the ascension
america

javelin though is just astounding, i would say that pretty much all of it is up with his very best. nearly every track has a brilliant shift comparable to a more subtle version of the moment when the keyboards appear in "should have known better". i'm happy to say all sorts of hyperbolic things like calling him the best musician of the last 20+ years now

i'm not sold on the whole album at all, not so much my thing

but

'goodbye evergreen' is sensational

that's about what i expected

lol i am nothing if not predictable

might be in my top 5 songs of the year, it's up there

i also liked the second track, you were right, i am Adz-pilled but beyond that find it hard to connect. damaged and spoilt by hypergarbage

devastated anew by this record today. i can't imagine listening to it while actually grieving though, yeesh. i'm enough of a puddle as it is.

I haven't listened to anything from him since "Adz," and I can't really remember that one, but my wife was playing him today and it was all more recent stuff I was unfamiliar with and it was all so pretty/sad. I really need to catch up. Also didn't realize/notice he hadn't toured in, like, 6 years? More?

his last solo tour was for carrie & lowell in 2015/16, but he did play a few shows for planetarium in 2017. it's been a while, yeah. his next album (the ascension) came out mid-pandemic so it wasn't at all surprising he didn't tour that, and now he's recovering from a very serious illness that means there's no possibility of touring the new album.

hopefully he will tour again when he's recovered though, the show i saw last tour was one of the best i've ever seen