A week rarely goes by without playing ‘Carrie & Lowell’, Sufjan Stevens’ stripped-back album, inspired by the death of his mother. In her Observer review of 2015, Kitty Empire tells the story better than I ever could. And how about these words:
“Above all, the songs come packed with conciliatory loveliness. This is an album about forgiveness, about love in the face of past incalculable hurts.”
The first few times I heard the record, I became inconsolably depressed. Whilst my own upbringing was clearly not as traumatic as his, its dysfunctionality haunts me every single day. I guess it always will. I loved the music but at first, when I was in a dark place, I gained no comfort, rather the reverse. Neither did I gain comfort from Stevens’ words about making the album:
“I was recording songs as a means of grieving, making sense of it, but the writing and recording wasn’t the salve I expected. I fell deeper and deeper into doubt and misery. It was a year of real darkness. In the past my work had a real reciprocity of resources – I would put something in and get something from it. But not this time.”
The Guardian journalist Dave Eggers wrote this:
“(Sufjan Stevens’) new album, Carrie & Lowell, a return to that narrative songwriting, is a fall-down gorgeous and emotionally devastating masterpiece prompted by the death of his mother, Carrie, in 2012. It features some of the most beautiful music ever made about loss, and some of the most direct explorations of death ever recorded. It is a brutal, extremely sad, relentlessly wrenching record that, because it’s so exquisitely crafted, you might keep on a loop for days.”
I suppose, after my family, music is my number one, my ultimate, passion. Sometimes the music itself is enough, but now and again words matter as much, maybe even more. I sit listening to the words on this album and, I admit, if I am in the right – or is it wrong? – time and place they can make me cry. Read these lines from Should Have Known Better:
“Spirit of my silence, I can hear you
But I’m afraid to be near you
And I don’t know where to begin
And I don’t know where to begin.”
In musical terms alone, Carrie & Lowell is one of the greatest records of all time. In my opinion, it is also one of the most powerful set of songs in musical history that could tear you apart. More than that, it’s a work of genius. Everyone should listen, if only once. I listened to it once and now I listen to it pretty well every week.
