CARRIE & LOWELL by Sufjan Stevens (Asthmatic Kitty records, 2015)
It may be a bit early to name an album of the year but Sufjan Stevens’ elegiac seventh album will certainly take some beating.
It is a painfully sad yet breathtaking beautiful record written for and about his late mother, Carrie, who died of stomach cancer in 2012.
In the words of the opening song, Death With Dignity, “I don’t know where to begin”, but ,suffice to say, I agree with Dave Eggers’s assessment of it as “an emotionally devastating masterpiece”.
Carrie’s death brought a sense of absence even though she was not a constant in her son’s life. She suffered from depression, schizophrenia, had bipolar disorder and was an alcoholic. On top of this, she also did drugs and had other substance abuse problems. It is not surprising that she was a difficult woman to get close to. Yet while the mother-son relationship was fraught and messy, these are songs of forgiveness not bitterness Continue reading
