Sufjan Stevens - Carrie & Lowell (2015)

Carrie & Lowell 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 & 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.

TRACKLIST
01 Death With Dignity
02 Should Have Known Better
03 All of Me Wants All of You
04 Drawn to the Blood
05 Fourth of July
06 The Only Thing
07 Carrie & Lowell
08 Eugene
09 John My Beloved
10 No Shade in the Shadow of the Cross
11 Blue Bucket of Gold