Friday 27 March 2015

Sufjan Stevens - Carrie & Lowell, album review



Juxtapositions

Sufjan Stevens’ latest beautiful album is both painful and pretty as it recalls a mother, Carrie, who left him as a child but re-entered his life with a step-father, Lowell, who took an interest in and supported Stevens’ musical ambitions as he grew up.

The album reminisces on his mother’s leaving and, more lamentably, her recent death. Whilst cathartic, it is full of the guilt and pain that comes with regret about being unable to change the past, and the grappling with understanding it. All of this is couched within the prettiest of melodies and harmonies as well as Stevens’ sweetly electronic pop orchestrations and plucked acoustic guitar or banjo. He has an uncanny ability to juxtapose the most explicit and/or poignant detail with the soothing beauty of these melodies, as he did stunningly in one of his earliest songs about serial killer John Wayne Gacy Jr, and then on this album in All of Me Wants All of You,

Shall we beat this or celebrate it?
You’re not the one to talk things through
You checked your texts while I masturbated
Menelich, I feel so used

and then another on this startling album, Fourth of July, where the brutal poetry of the lyrics are once again cushioned within the gorgeous tune

The evil it spread like a fever ahead
It was night when you died, my firefly
What could I have said to raise you from the dead?
Oh could I be the sky on the Fourth of July?

Well you do enough talk
My little hawk, why do you cry?
Tell me what did you learn from the Tillamook burn?
Or the Fourth of July?
We’re all gonna die

Sitting at the bed with the halo at your head
Was it all a disguise, like Junior High
Where everything was fiction, future, and prediction
Now, where am I? My fading supply

Did you get enough love, my little dove
Why do you cry?
And I’m sorry I left, but it was for the best
Though it never felt right
My little Versailles

The hospital asked should the body be cast
Before I say goodbye, my star in the sky
Such a funny thought to wrap you up in cloth
Do you find it all right, my dragonfly?

Shall we look at the moon, my little loon
Why do you cry?
Make the most of your life, while it is rife
While it is light

Well you do enough talk
My little hawk, why do you cry?
Tell me what did you learn from the Tillamook burn?
Or the Fourth of July?
We’re all gonna die

Once you have listened to this and then the next, The Only Thing, we too are fully a part of that most uncomfortable juxtaposition. It is difficult to recommend that someone else shares in this, but I think you should.


The penultimate song on this album No Shade in the Shadow of the Cross is another beautifully caustic rumination on the meaning of death, containing the line Like my mother/Give wings to a stone/It's only the shadow of a cross.

No comments:

Post a Comment