Score: 4.5/5
Sufjan Stevens has been thinking. He’s been thinking about a load of heavy issues, including his relationship with his stepfather and late mother, his drug use and his religion. Five years have passed since his last album, “The Age of Adz,” was released, and things have changed.
“Carrie & Lowell,” is Stevens’ clean-cut, dramatic homage to his own life. It is a straightforward and insanely honest autobiography with little to no allusions made as there are in previous albums.
Opening the album is “Death with Dignity,” a song wherein honesty is not Stevens’ best policy, but the only policy he has. This track sets the trend of the whole album that is sparse instrumentation and heavy use of strings and ukulele. In a stripped song like this, it seems important to contrast it against his earlier work, specifically his Fifty States Project and the albums “Illinois” and “Michigan” It was these releases that introduced listeners to Stevens’ propensity for broad orchestration and uncommon time signatures.
One of the first early releases was “Should Have Known Better.” Though the entire album is bare-boned and emotional, this song exhibits a strong similarity to other acoustic songwriters like Damien Rice. “Known Better” discusses Stevens’ regrets in life and his unwillingness to hate his mother, who left him on multiple occasions as a child.
“Carrie & Lowell” is where Stevens most unabashedly displays his relationship with God. His beliefs have always been tenuous, but overall more powerful than his addiction or want to leave everything behind. Like God is to His believers, Stevens’ feels his mother, Carrie, in every place and everything. “Fourth of July,” carries with it the idea of ascension — fireworks rocketing skyward, the rise to the heavens and the mention of birds, which is a reference to Carrie Stevens and her pet names for her son.
Stevens discusses his youth and coming of age during family excursions to Oregon in the song “Eugene.” Memories of his adolescence conjure up imageries of a young Sufjan taking swimming lessons and the instructor mispronouncing his name. Stevens questions life and its inherent pointlessness, asking if his current position is meaningful to those he loved, singing, “What’s the point of writing songs if they’ll never even hear you?”
The ever-present theme of love is best summarized in the songs “All of Me Wants All of You” and “Drawn to the Blood.” Stevens explains in “Drawn” his pain and confusion from turbulent relationships while painting the picture of sacrifice, playing on the topic of bloodshed being both literal and figurative.
For Stevens, his religion has always been a prevalent topic in his songwriting. His tumultuous relationship with God is the fuel to the fire that is his life and the choices he makes in it. “The Only Thing” and “No Shade in the Shadow of the Cross” are two contrasting displays of Stevens’ devotion, one showing the securing power of religion and the other making clear the despair he has due to his sins.