Sufjan Stevens’ Carrie & Lowell

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