New Music (3.31.2015)

Sufjan Stevens
Carrie & Lowell

In a career spanning well-over a decade, Sufjan Stevens has proven himself to be a master of storytelling. He is able to create time and place using only song in a way unparalleled by any other current musician of any genre.

The American mythology he retells--or even generates--on the majestic orchestra pieces Michigan and Illinois is something akin to reading Whitman or Emerson. Even the folksy-Christian Seven Swans was able to transport you to biblical places, and The Age of Adz painted pictures with electronics so gracefully, the techno love story contained within seemed to unfold directly in front of you.

Carrie & Lowell is not a mythos, nor is it a story. Not in Steven's typical, fictional sense anyhow. This is the heartbreaking true-life drama that is Steven's relationship with his mother, a woman plagued by mental illness and substance abuse that followed her--and in effect, Stevens himself--to her death in 2012. But never before has such a gut-wrenching tale been told so beautifully.

Stevens has taken something so deeply personal, and made it into a tapestry of awe. It is, by a wide margin, his most minimal album, with most songs containing only a plucked guitar and Steven's barely-whispered vocals. It is also his most affecting, with each syllable sounding as if from a trauma ward, each note played like it is the last she would hear. You can hear with each phrase how Stevens is devastated by the loss of Carrie, despite having only spent only a few days with her over the course of his 40 years.

But do not take from this that Carrie & Lowell is nothing but a depressing affair. This album is more than a dirge, but the second-line spiritual as well. Yes, Stevens dwells on his mother's death, and often contemplates how he can raise her, but just as frequently he celebrates the little time they were together.

Carrie & Lowell is produced gorgeously, with each minimalist song given the feeling of a vast space, fathomless in it's overwhelming starkness. But more than anything, Stevens has now provided us with the code-key to unlocking all those cryptic and vague lyrics from past works, like Michigan's "Romulus" or Illinois' "The Seer's Tower." This is a work of extreme genius and infinite appeal, granting invaluable comfort and indispensable humanity to those who would hear it.