COMM 380:  Media Criticism

Over the past decade, Sufjan Stevens has infused the most painful parts of his history with the mythology of civilizations past, creating a legend for the modern era. 2015’s Carrie &­ Lowell is no different, Sufjan’s 7th studio album is profoundly intimate, carefully composed, and explores the complicated relationship that exists between memory and the emotions that can cloud the past. As such, the 42-year-old musician chooses to abandon the electronic sound of 2005’s Illinois in favor of a much more somber, somewhat melancholic sound that was only glimpsed briefly in 2004’s Seven Swans. This is an especially important choice for Carrie & Lowell when considering that this album was created in response to the death of the Sufjan’s Mother.

Carrie & Lowell treads deeply personal territory, delivering poignant and as Steven Thompson of NPR notes “tenderly emotional treatises” (Thompshon, 2015) to the audience. These tales of loss, abandonment, and vacations to Eugene Oregon clearly resounded with critics, gaining an average score of 90 on Metacritic and even being touted as “a quiet triumphant return for Stevens.” (Hannah, 2015). In an interview with Pitchfork Sufjan reveals that this record wasn’t intended to be a project that adds to the cosmology he’s built thus far, rather “It’s something that was necessary for me to do in the wake of my mother’s death –to pursue a sense of peace and serenity in spite of the suffering.” (Dombal, 2015)

This sentiment of mending in the face of suffering permeates outward, driving both the sound and narrative towards a softer, more wistful tone that matches the tepid relationship Sufjan has with the memories of the past. The album title itself is an homage to the Sufjan’s Mother and Stepfather and the narrative that he weaves throughout continues the artist's tradition of linking reality and fantasy.

Steven’s chooses to keep the album relatively barebones using at most an acoustic guitar with the piano playing softly underneath, all to compliment Sufjan’s whispery voice as he sorts through the confusion that comes from grief. This musical styling suits the equally stripped-down lyrics that help inform the story that Sufjan tells throughout the album’s 45-minute runtime. These musical stylings coalesce to form an “emotionally unclothed” (Radio, 2015) sound that is reminiscent of the quieter tracks on Illinois.

The album opens with Sufjan seeming to sigh the lyrics Spirit of My Silence, I can hear you/But I’m afraid to be near you/And I don’t know where to begin, which hearkens both the confusion he feels to a very important theme that is a through line for the album, which is abandonment. In the same interview with Pitchfork Media Sufjan candidly reveals that his mother struggled with both mental illness and addiction which contributed her eventually abandonment when the artist was just one.

In the same song, Sufjan hints at a progression for his grief, admitting “I forgive you” and noting that “you’ll never see us again.” conveying a sense of closure and reprieve from the demons that haunted the pair. As the album continues it feels as though we are hearing the artist talk about snapshots of his life, some in the distant past like “Should Have Known Better” where Stevens recounts another instance of his mother’s instability during his upbringing.

Steven’s opens “Should Have Known Better” with the plucking of a banjo, the effect that this musical choice is a subtle one, it creates a dreamlike backdrop for Steven’s to lay the surreal tale of being left at a video store by Carrie at the age of 3 maybe 4. As the song continues there is a strong juxtaposition between the lyrics and the music that accompanies it. As we reach the first bridge of the song Stevens add a chorus of female voices in addition to subdued banjo heard at the outset.

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These gorgeous flourishes of musicality are then betrayed by Sufjan’s confession of “a black shroud” that has existed within him throughout his life, coloring events in his life that should have been happy like the birth of his niece, and even going so far as admitting to the feeling of having “no reason to live”. There is certainly a nihilistic undertone to the record, however, there are punctuations of sweetness, like in “The Fourth of July”.

The first stanza sees the man explaining how she passed “the evil, it spread like a fever ahead/ it was Sufjan treads more abstract territory with this track, as he holds an imaginary conversation with his mother after her passing. The song starts with a lone piano playing a soothing lullaby, then is accompanied by the whisper of Sufjan acting as both himself and his mother, alternating the voice night when you died, my firefly”.

The next stanza is a told from the perspective of Carrie, asking a series of questions to her “little hawk. Why do you cry? Tell me, what did you learn from the Tillamook burn?/Or the Fourth of July?”

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