Sufjan Stevens’ Carrie & Lowell

"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

(Sorry)

(I made the same joke on facebook...)

Have to admit I haven't listened to it yet because I'm nervous about how it's gonna make me feel. I actually teared up reading one of the advance reviews.

Haha it's funny, it's so devastating as to be almost useless. "When will it be useful to me to feel this way?"

Is this album this year's Benji, in the sense that it is a spare, raw, revealing & super personal folk record by an established indie artist? I haven't heard it yet beyond one song.

Is this album this year's Benji, in the sense that it is a spare, raw, revealing & super personal folk record by an established indie artist? I haven't heard it yet beyond one song.

No. Benji is fantastic, but the songwriting on Carrie & Lowell is better. Moreover, neither are traditional folk albums and unlike Benji, Carrie & Lowell isn’t a singer-songwriter album (it’s electro-acoustic and dynamic). I don’t know if Benji is uniquely revealing. Mark Kozelek is rarely subtle.

I’d also stress it’s wholly sad. Benji was simultaneously funny and sad.

Benji was uniquely revealing cause it felt like unedited cathartic diary entries. But yeah I'm surprised you say this isn't a singer-songwriter album. Going to listen soon.

Every time I see this album title, I think of Law & Order

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/f2/3a/f8/f23af82cc63a5ec313ddb033623943d6.jpg

this record is much much more affecting than benji, to me. but they're not really that comparable, i'd put this up against april or ghosts of the great highway if you really want to compare to kozelek

Oh wow.
Heard Sufjan's new one for the first time today. Guess which album immediately came to my mind?

Cannot wait to hear this again and hopefully adore it as much as 'Benji'

Flaming Lips mentioned upthread too. I reckon I have found some new potential funeral soundtracks, to replace 'Do you Realise'

welp can't be doing this at work. sounds good, though.

this album is a monster

washed over me on first listen, but i was distracted. i suspect this is one of those albums where an attentiveness to the finer nuances pays off.

I dunno guys, the meticulous prettiness and the measured-twice quality of the lyrics kind of mutes the impact for me. It feels too worked-over to really devastate the way I gather it's meant to (and seems to for most)

that said it's a lovely record, my fave of his probably since Seven Swans

really not a fan of his singing, phrasing, and multi-tracked vocals on this so far

a lot of his stuff sounds like church music to me, but this multi-tracked style sounds like a congregation. it all works for me on most of this one.

Man, this album is devastating. I'm kinda shocked this isn't getting more discussion here. I'm not the biggest Sufjan fan - I typically like about 3 or 4 songs per album. But this album is different somehow. It's probably just that it has less of a twee feel to it, overall. I like him enough to give at least one listen to anything he releases, but this is by faaaaaarr my favorite album of his; my favorite album of the year, so far.

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