Carrie and Lowell was recorded by Stevens alongside Casey Foubert, Laura Veirs, Nedelle Torrisi, Sean Carey, Ben Lester and Thomas Bartlett and mixed by Stevens, Bartlett and Pat Dillet.
The album sounds like memory: it spans decades yet does not trade on pastiche or nostalgia. Stevens's gauzy double-tracked vocals wash across the dashboard of long-finned, drop-top Americana, yet as we race towards the coast we are reminded that sunshine leads to shadow, for this is a landscape of terminal roads, unsteady bridges, traumatic video stores, and unhappy beds that provide the scenery for tales of jackknifed cars, funerals, and forgiveness for the dead.
Each track in this collection of eleven songs begins with a fragile melody that gathers steam until it becomes nothing less than a modern hymn. Sufjan recounts the indignities of our world, of technological distraction and sad sex, of an age without neither myths nor miracle - and this time around, his voice carries the burden of wisdom. Carrie and Lowell accomplishes the rare thing that any art should achieve, particularly in these noisy and fragmented days: by seeking to understand, Sufjan makes us feel less alone.
Cat: AKR099LP
Label: Asthmatic Kitty Records
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Tracklist
1 Death with Dignity
2 Should Have Known Better
3 All of Me Wants All of You
4 Drawn to the Blood
5 Eugene
6 Fourth of July
7 The Only Thing
8 Carrie & Lowell
9 John My Beloved
10 No Shade in the Shadow of the Cross
11 Blue Bucket of Gold