Between the open wounds, Stevens calls upon childhood memories to carry the album. I didn’t really notice these features , or at least appreciate them, at first, but, when I did, with that came me loving the vocals. I first fell in love with the vocals. Carrie & Lowell fills in some of the space between the mythologies of motherhood and Stevens’ own memories of growing up unmothered. The album was given a one-week preview on NPR. Carrie was a schizophrenic and faced a reality challenged by extensive substance abuse. The names in the album’s title are the first names of Stevens’ mother and stepfather. Carrie left Stevens and the rest of his family when he was very young, a point in his biography that has appeared throughout the singer’s music, but never so explicitly. Her abandonment of Sufjan and his siblings … References in Sufjan Stevens' 'Carrie & Lowell,' explained. According to some stories, Pegasus—the child of Poseidon and Medusa—came out of Medusa as Perseus killed her. She died of cancer in December 2012. For anyone interested, here it is. This lyric could also be referring to Aaron Rose, a filmmaker and artist from Oregon. These bright points keep him from slinking entirely into despair, and they ground the narratives of his suffering. Background: Oregon myth has it that pioneers in the 1800s stumbled on some pebbles that they initially thought were copper—only to find out years later that what they found was actually gold. Naturally I can only assume, especially since its nothing like Carrie and Lowell (Though ironically the title track does have a portion that sounds similar to this as well), that this portion is a sample from his next album/project. Carrie was bipolar and schizophrenic and suffered from drug addiction and substance abuse. It is a simply beautiful song, using mythological allusions to deftly portray Carrie’s struggles. Lyric: “Signs and wonders, Perseus aligned with the skull / Slain Medusa, Pegasus alight from us all”. (Or the Gossip Girl character.). It lies bare here, that need to be loved, that desperate shiver away from isolation and death. Previous Episodes. It’s about Carrie’s death, but also Sufjan’s death, the death he finds looming taller before him every day. As a result of his career Carey grew up all around the world. Every RuPaul's Drag Race season 13 runway look, ranked, Spread the love with EW's Valentine's Day gift guide, The Masked Dancer revealed: Every unmasked celebrity on season 1. Icarus disobeyed his father’s orders, of course, and he died. Background: Elijah is a prophet known for his unwavering loyalty to God and for going to heaven in a fiery chariot. Melancholy is a theme that runs through this record. The show, which was designed by Marc Janowitz, … Then I fell in love with … Plain and simple, this is truly an album for the ages. We waste so much time, all of us, and we only get so much of it. carrie and lowell Part 2 of my favourite albums in 2015. Nothing can bring that future back. Rated #2 in the best albums of 2015, and #127 of all-time album.. “Was it all a disguise, like junior high/ Where everything was fiction, future, and prediction/ Now where am I? The album’s fourth song, “Drawn to the Blood”, finds Stevens crying out for love after being abused by a partner. Archived. Carrie and Lowell Analysis (updated link) Close. These brutal soliloquies burrow down to the bone, aided by the settings in which Stevens places them. There is still so much about her that he will never know. Stevens thinks he loves a person only to find he loves a fossil, an impression. There’s something inside of Sufjan Stevens, who is widely known as the stereotypical eclectic artist, that drives him to create the most beautiful scenes with his music. The Age of Adz is Sufjan dialed up to his highest saturation, all horns and squiggles and squeals, all orchestral electropop crescendo. this link is to an external site that may or may not meet accessibility guidelines. Carrie & Lowell is his outlet, his unread letter to his mother who did her best to raise him by not being the one to raise him, and Lowell – a stepfather who filled the largely vacant parental shoes. By that time, they’d forgotten where they found the gold, and the location still remains a mystery. She had depression and schizophrenia, struggled with substance abuse, and was sometimes homeless. AKR099; CD). Jump to Comments. Lyric: “Tell me, what did you learn from the Tillamook Burn”. Print. Released 31 March 2015 on Asthmatic Kitty (catalog no. It’s always been there, in Stevens’ art (he once wrote a love song for a serial killer, don’t forget) and really in all art, but Stevens had always obscured it in stories grander than his own. The production is weightless but damp, and it sounds like … Her father is a distinguished geologist who was voted Scientist of the Year in 1979 at the Rocky Mountain Association of Geologists. Share via Email. But, as I listened to it more, the positives of the record started revealing themselves to me. Carrie and Lowell is the title song of the album and the most traditionally poetic creation in the collection. At times it can feel like the listener is almost a third wheel; an acquaintance sitting a room between two best friends sharing and confessing … Subscribe. On his seventh album, Carrie & Lowell, Stevens struggles to keep his voice from breaking. She asks him not to cry. 35. Carrie left her family when Stevens was one, only seeing him and his siblings again four years later, spending three summers with them in Eugene, Oregon where she then lived with her new husband, Lowell Brams. The first six albums by Sufjan Stevens split open at their seams with wonder. See also: Regina Spektor’s “Samson.” Or Stevens could be referring to radio legend and advice extraordinaire Delilah—but that seems unlikely. A family loss sends Stevens back to his heartbreaking folk roots. Carrie & Lowell Tour (2015-16) The Carrie & Lowell Tour was the sixth concert tour by American recording artist Sufjan Stevens. “My prayer has always been love,” he continues. To make the listening experience less confusing, here’s a brief glossary of the proper nouns Stevens sings about on Carrie & Lowell. Stevens played over 100 shows in North America, Australasia and Europe Background. Carrie & Lowell is a heartfelt expression of love that is devoid of the slightest hint of sentimentality, and with these songs, Stevens strips his emotions bare and allows us all to be the audience for his anger, shame, and sense of loss as he pages through his memories of his family. Stevens wrote Carrie & Lowell in the wake of grief, but the album’s not a eulogy. Essential Tracks: “Fourth of July”, “The Only Thing”, and “John My Beloved”, Pick up a copy of Carrie & Lowell here…, Ranking: Every Sufjan Stevens Album from Worst to Best, Album Review: Ryley Walker – Primrose Green, Stream: Godspeed You! Then Stevens, speaking in his mother’s voice, repeats the words “we’re all gonna die” until the song dwindles to silence. Le titre de l'album est composé des prénoms de sa mère et de son beau-père : Lowell Brams. It’s an album hollowed by grief, as expansive as Adz but without the verve. Stevens’ Carrie & Lowell is available now. Stevens last released an album in 2010, at the peak of trans-genre maximalism — it was the same year Kanye West put out My Dark Beautiful Twisted Fantasy. Black Emperor’s new album Asunder, Sweet and Other Distress, DMX Hospitalized in Grave Condition Following Drug Overdose [Updated], St. Vincent Goes Back to 1973 NYC with Retro SNL Performance: Watch, Robert Fripp and Toyah Celebrate Easter Sunday with Iron Maiden's "The Number of the Beast": Watch, Margot Robbie Says Quentin Tarantino Has a "20-Hour Cut" of Once Upon a Time in… Hollywood, Vicky Cornell, Her Lawyer, and Band's Ex-Manager Hit Back at Soundgarden Members in Latest Legal Spat, Attention Scumdogs: GWAR's Bud of Gods Merch Out Now, Here's the Hottest Shirt to Protect Live Music, These 10 Album Covers Are Worse Than Justin Bieber's, These Masks Are Perfect for Pop Culture Fans. Carrie & Lowell is a highly emotional album. Background: Thorazine is an antipsychotic medication used to treat mental disorders including schizophrenia, which Carrie suffered from. Entertainment Weekly is a registered trademark of Meredith Corporation All Rights Reserved. He got to know Carrie in some capacity over the years; he visited her in the hospital just before she died. Share on Facebook. He’ll turn 40 on the first of July, and throughout the record he’s racked by the diminishing number of years he has left. With "Carrie & Lowell", Sufjan Stevens has released his greatest record thus far. He’s since drained his music of all that, but Carrie & Lowell isn’t a return to the tentative woodsy footprints of 2004’s Seven Swans. Released in March 2015, Carrie & Lowell is perhaps Sufjan’s bleakest album, tracing the songwriter’s struggle with grief and depression following the sudden death of his mother. He urges his partner to leave him and find something living; he goes on to pronounce himself dead. By forsaking greatness, Stevens has unearthed a wonder altogether more tremendous than the one at the top of those towers he used to stack. WYSLT Explained; Tag: Carrie and Lowell review WYSLT – Carrie and Lowell . Share on Twitter. The final song shifts into this atmospheric ambient instrumental that feels dreamy. When I first heard Carrie and Lowell, I actually just liked two songs on it (the first two). Full of emotion, honest, melancholic. Sufjan Stevens Has Announced His Long Awaited ‘Carrie and Lowell’ Followup: ‘The Ascension’. Carrie and Lowell Analysis (updated link) For my American Hero class( which deals with the cosmogonic cycle and symbolism in Amer. Carrie and Lowell by Sufjan Stevens. To make the listening experience less confusing, here’s a brief glossary of the proper nouns Stevens sings about on Carrie & Lowell. “Should Have Known Better”. You can hear the way he pronounces his choruses in all caps: “ALL THINGS GO!” he declares on “Chicago”; “THIS IS THE AGE OF ADZ, ETERNAL LIVING!” on “Age of Adz”. A raw yearning for meaning and connection sears through Carrie & Lowell. To promote the album, Sufjan set out on an extensive worldwide tour, playing almost 100 concerts performing almost exclusively songs from the new record. December 13, 2015 December 13, 2015 sestrahood 2015, amazing, blackness, carrie and lowell, coming home, dream pop, folk, hip hop, honeymoon, jazz, kendrick lamar, lana del rey, leon bridges, music, natalie prass, soul, sufjan stevens, to pimp a butterfly Leave a comment. Background: Spencer Butte is the highest point in Eugene, Ore. Background: Samson’s power was in his hair, but Delilah cut it all off one night. From the opener, where the laid-back guitar comes in playing a simple melody and Sufjan comes in singing his sorrows, we partake on a journey through Sufjan’s childhood years, his times with his mother, why he … (No offense, Delilah.). Lit), we had the oppurtunity to analyze any piece of film, literature or music in american history. Entertainment Weekly may receive compensation for some links to products and services on this website. Carrie and Lowell Such a long time ago Like a dead horse Meadowlark drive your arrow Season of hope (after the flood) Valentine, spurn my sorrow Head on the floorboards (covered in blood) Drunk as a horsefly Climb on the mattress pad Twist my arm Under the pear tree Shadows and light conspiring Covered bridge, I scream Cottage Grove shade invite me I will bow down (Dido's lament) Lord of the ancient waters From the backyard (as far as she went) Carrie … Although his latest album, an exploration of grief titled Carrie & Lowell, is lighter on the references than his other records, that’s not saying much: There’s still at least one obscure mention to Greek mythology, the Bible, or Oregon–where Stevens spent some summers with his late mother, the subject of the album—in almost every track. Carrie & Lowell, an Album by Sufjan Stevens. He’s adopted outsider art and state histories as vessels for his own human longing. If “Carrie and Lowell” is about anything it’s about the work of thinking through song, the planting of various philosophies in an aural playground where all is not joyous but there is no absence of joy since the spirit is lifted up by creation, and the telling of stories that lead to other thoughts, the artist’s spirit sitting in silence and his voice and his playing. Sufjan Stevens has announced a brand new album and the Supreme Court has handed a win to religious conservatives and we’ve got a new Christian-centric Kanye track. No longer triumphant, he sounds ragged, hoarse, done for. Background: “Dido’s Lament” is an aria (that has nothing to do with Dido of “Thank You” fame/infamy, sadly), sometimes called “When I Am Laid in Earth,” from Henry Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas. Lyric: “Carrie surprised us / Erebus on my back”. The track is an elegy of beauty, joy, and pain retold in hindsight by an adult child recalling all the warts of his personal history with his mother. Now we get to Carrie and Lowell. He longs for death, envisions suicide, wonders if he’s ever been loved on the sweetly melodic “The Only Thing”. Guitars and banjos surface again as primary instruments, but organs and synthesizers also trace the album’s wide embrace. Personal ballads about Stevens’ upbringing, seeking of religious solace, and the reconciliation he had with the relationship of his mother, even at the expense of his mental health, are brought up multiple times on the album. Nothing can postpone the end of our stories, and there are always so many bad chapters. Unlike Stevens' previous studio album, the electronic The Age of Adz, Carrie & Lowell is sparsely instrumental and marks a return to the performer's indie folk roots. Lyric: “Rose of Aaron’s beard, where you can reach me”, Background: Aaron’s Beard is a name for the Hypericum calycinum plant known for its yellow flowers. On Carrie & Lowell, the pacing changes once again.The masses that gathered behind Stevens on prior albums have dispersed, with only a select few voices that are not his own remaining. The production is big and impeccable, the perfect atmosphere for Stevens’ multi-tracked vocals to quiver, crack, and sometimes soar. On “Fourth of July”, the album’s most tender and visceral song, Stevens remembers — or more likely imagines — a conversation with Carrie in which she consoles him about her own death. She died of … This isn't your typical "depressing" record with sappy songs regarding grief or heartbreak. The tour supported his seventh studio album, Carrie & Lowell (2015). Carrie & Lowell is titled after Stevens' mother and stepfather. Later, on “John My Beloved”, he laments that he’s “counting my cards down to one.”. Carrie & Lowell sounds like memory: it spans decades yet does not trade on pastiche or nostalgia. Background: Icarus’ father gifted him wings made of wax with the warning to avoid flying close to the sun, as the heat would melt them. These seem like small comforts, but for Stevens, they come from God — they’ll have to be enough. Background: The Tillamook Burn was the name for a chain of forest fires that struck Oregon’s Tillamook State Forest from 1933 to 1951, resulting in miles of destruction. Stevens appeals to God, the most consistent figure in all his music, to make sense of the lonely, barren life he finds himself following. Carrie & Lowell Lyrics: 3, 4 / Carrie and Lowell / Such a long time ago / Like a dead horse / Meadowlark, drive your arrow / Season of hope (after the flood) / … Background: Perseus is a celebrated hero in Greek mythology who beheaded Medusa, a monster with snakes for hair. Wonders that let him cling to life: moonlight, constellations, ocean. 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