In 2012, Carrie died.

Sufjan Stevens’ estranged mother had left him in a perpetual state of turmoil. For years, he struggled to accept her loss and reconcile their strained relationship. After years of grief, regret, and acceptance, Carrie & Lowell, Stevens’ seventh album, was released. Through 11 tracks, the Michigan artist sought to achieve a sense of closure through deeply intimate lyrics and sparse instrumentation.

Carrie & Lowell is Sufjan Stevens’ most personal work yet — which, considering his open and honest approach to songwriting, is an achievement of its own. He opens his heart and soul to the world on Carrie & Lowell, discussing love, loss, trauma, and the childhood wounds that never healed right. This album is not for the faint of heart. It’s an album of closure, An album of solace, of acceptance, and finding your way through a world that can be too often too cold.

Aesthetics

Carrie & Lowell feels like a walk in the woods on a foggy morning. The use of empty space allows the guitar to reverberate through each track, creating a chilling combination with Sufjan’s eerily echoed voice. Songs swim with the ghosts of regret, their instrumentation creating a sense of isolation with ones’ own emotion. The ambient outros hang in the air like an intense grief that won’t quite dissipate. These techniques help to create a haunting sense of loss on the album. For a man who has too often hid his emotions behind larger-than-life stories, an album like Carrie & Lowell seems almost out of character. But, as Stevens learns, the best way to grow is to step out of ones’ comfort zone.

Best Aesthetics: It’s hard not to feel something while you listen to Carrie & Lowell, especially on songs like Should Have Known Better. On the second track of the album, Sufjan retells a story of Carrie leaving a young Sufjan and his siblings at a video store in a schizophrenic fever. The bare guitar is backed by accompanied vocals, which are slowly joined by a gorgeous keyboard and brief outro that encapsulates the formula of Carrie & Lowell. “Nothing can be changed/The past is still the past/The bridge to nowhere”

Lyricism

Sufjan has always excelled lyrically, but never before have his lyrics carried such weight. In the past, he’s used biblical and mythical allegory to help come to terms with difficult topics, but Carrie & Lowell favors a brutally honest approach. He uses this honesty to reach a sense of reconciliation between himself and his mother, who repeatedly entered and left his life as he grew up. These themes of acceptance and moving forward help to drive the later half of the album, providing what little closure they can to a man filled with uninhibited grief.

Best Lyrics: The album reaches its emotional apex on Fourth of July. The song details Carrie’s final goodbye with Sufjan as she lies in the hospital. Each stanza is an exchange in the conversation between the two. It’s chilling to hear Sufjan so intimately show love for someone he’s so unfamiliar with. Their estranged relationship feels incomplete after the last verse, as if they both had something more to say but didn’t know how to properly express it. These unresolved feelings are the most heartbreaking of the entire album, an album which already addresses heartbreak on nearly every verse.

Personality

Sufjan Stevens has, traditionally, been renowned for his (relatively) upbeat attitude. On albums like Illinois, he’s been personified as a curious, adventurous human, eager to interact with the world around him. Years of isolation and regret have caused Stevens to feel cold and regretful over unfulfilled, incomplete relationships. These emotions manifest themselves on Carrie & Lowell, providing a cynical sense of emptiness to many of his more genuine characteristics. The album gives you the sense that Sufjan has been suffering for a while, and few have helped him through it.

Where Personality Shines: If ever there were a song to encapsulate these emotions, it would be The Only Thing. On the follow-up to Fourth of July, Sufjan begins to exhibit patterns of self-destruction. Through this, he feels a genuine connection to his mother; something he’s never felt in his life before. The song concludes with him recognizing the grief he’d been avoiding for so long. It’s a realization that, for his entire life, he’s missed someone that was never there. And, now that she’s gone, he’ll never be able to see what could have been.

Versatility

The album is a double-edged sword. It’s best when served in complete isolation, but the themes of grief and regret can cause one to spiral into feelings of disassociation. You can listen to Carrie & Lowell in any way you wish, but its sparse instrumentation works best when played through a small speaker or through headphones. The key to enjoying this album on its own is through forced seclusion to parallel the emotions that the artist experienced creating it.

Where to Listen: On a foggy day, take a drive close to nature and let Death with Dignity play softly in the background. The ambiance, coupled with the thickness of the fog, will help to obscure your sense of direction. You might feel alone, but knowing that someone else is alone with you and understands your pain is the key component to Carrie & Lowell. The world can be cold, but at least you aren’t suffering through it alone.

Quality

The album was primarily recorded in Sufjan’s apartment in New York, but several other songs were created in sheer isolation from the world. It was produced by Thomas Bartlett, a friend of Sufjan’s who recently lost his brother to cancer. The grief of both artists help to propel the ultimate themes of the album forward, creating a dichotomy of loss and acceptance, of grief and moving on. This sense of catharsis cements Carrie & Lowell as Stevens’ strongest work of art yet. Few artists can shine a light as close to their insecurities as Sufjan can.

Highest Quality: Everything about Blue Bucket of Gold, from its keyboard-laden intro to its bone-chilling outro, feels surreal — unnatural, even. The supposed conclusion of the album leaves so much hanging in the air. You aren’t entirely sure whether Sufjan has recovered or not, or even if he’s accepted the loss of his mother. It’s quite clear that he’s still hurting — and he will be for a long time.

Conclusions

“Make the most of your life, while it is rife/while it is light”. These words linger in the concluding portions of Carrie & Lowell long after they’re sung, offering what little conclusion they can for an album so dedicated to closure. At the end of it all, you get the sense that Sufjan is still suffering, still trying to pick up the pieces of this strained relationship. Little by little, he tries to learn something — anything — from all of this suffering. The consolation of all this is the recognition of time.

We all only have so much time on this planet. Time we can spend learning the lessons we’ve been provided, or time filled with regret and wishing things could be different. At the conclusion of Blue Bucket of Gold, Sufjan finally realizes that it’s not too late to make up for lost time. The only thing we can do with the time we have is use it to better ourselves and the world around us. That is the lesson of Carrie & Lowell; time comes whether we want it to or not. It isn’t about how it happens; it’s about what we do with it.

Final Score: 9.5 regrets/10

This one wasn’t an easy listen. If you prefer the hard-pill-to-swallow approach of Carrie & Lowell, you’ll probably enjoy Foxing’s Nearer My God just as much, if not more. Are you more into the themes of isolation and catharsis? Bon Iver’s For Emma, Forever Ago should do the trick. Want me to review your album or an album you love? Head over to the contact page and give me what you need!