Sufjan Stevens’ Carrie & Lowell

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOstc1ZfDN4

this one's much better than "video game". the same style just executed far far better (also with a long instrumental intro)

new album is fine but i don't think it's a masterpiece on the level of his last two. it's a bit too samey for how long it is but i do really like "make me an offer i cannot refuse" and "tell me you love me"

it's very clear why "my rajneesh" wouldn't have fit on the album but it's significantly better than anything on it. even "with my whole heart" from last year is very similar in sound to the album but much stronger and has a little more going on than most of the album

First impression on the new album is that there’s a dissonance between the intended scope and the sound of it. It’s an album of big musical ideas but meager sound palette and production... and I don’t feel it’s an aesthetic choice. It sounds outdated but not on purpose.

he said jam & lewis' production (specifically rhythm nation) was a big influence on this album but i don't really hear that at all, there's none of their energy at all. i'm still enjoying the album but he's capable of so much better, especially when you compare to when he's worked with this sort of sound palette before to much better effect ("i walked", the live version of "all of me wants all of you", "with my whole heart" etc.)

lyrically he's deliberately writing in cliche a lot of the time here but i don't think he's really managed to get anything interesting out of that either which is a shame

full live film here btw

https://vimeo.com/215185438

Surprised by the huge Boards of Canada lift in the middle section of "Die Happy". I wonder if they will take action?

which track does he lift?

I can't put my finger on it yet, it's got a very similar chord sequence and tonal structure to something from the MHTRTC era, I'll do some listening and see if I can figure it out.

idk why but this album is making me laugh a lot rn, love Sufjan but there's something ridiculous about him

It's definitely goofy in parts. (That's a compliment!)

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