Album Review: Sufjan Stevens- Carrie and Lowell

A decade ago, on what would probably be considered his “breakout album,” Sufjan Stevens made a startling and melodramatic confession on the spectral, haunting track “John Wayne Gacy JR.”—And in my best behavior, I am really just like him. Look beneath the floorboards for the secrets I have hid, he whispers near the end of the song, prior to the frenetically plucked acoustic guitars coming to a sudden stop.

Today, Stevens makes an equally startling, and personal confession on his latest album, Carrie and Lowell—You checked your text while I masturbated, he sings earnestly on “All of Me Wants All of You.”

The juxtaposition of these two statements is stark—one weighed down in both the lore of grizzly American crime and the pseudo-Christian imagery and themes that Stevens has always had a penchant for working into his lyrics; the other admission being incredibly cringe-worthy, pathetic, and brutally honest.

I was surprised to find myself listening to the new Sufjan Stevens album. When it was first announced, the idea of honestly caring about a record from this in the year 2015 called to mind a cavalcade of .GIFS that I could use as a response. 

 

And this album has been out for a minute—I mean I’ve really resisted the idea of even listening to it for review purposes only, mostly because I don’t have a lot of free time, and the free time I have—I don’t want to dedicate to listening to something that I am not invested in.

Then came the praise. The 9.3 and “Best New Music” on Pitchfork, who have always lauded Steven’s efforts, even his maligned foray into synthesizers five years ago with The Age of Adz. They also gave the ridiculously titled “No Shade in The Shadow of The Cross” “Best New Track.”

I wanted to avoid it even more.

I talked to a good friend of mine on Easter Sunday, and in getting caught up, he asked me if I had taken a listen to Carrie and Lowell. He laughed at my laundry list of responses as to why I hadn’t. He said he, too, resisted at first, but he really liked it, and thought I should take a listen.

Carrie and Lowell, to some extent, musically anyway, is a “return to form” for Stevens, who at age 40, went through a musical mid-life crisis after embarking on an impossible yet impressive idea—the mythologized “50 States Project,” where he was going to make one album based on each state in the Union.

He got through two before throwing in the towel, later admitting the whole thing was a joke. The signs all were there—specifically that his album dedicated to Illinois warranted a companion album of outtakes and additional material—The Avalanche—released roughly a year after the Illinois record.

Five years after Illinois, Stevens returned with the aforementioned Age of Adz, where he forsook his instrument of choice (the banjo)—and plugged ahead in a new, pop-driven direction.

Musically, Carrie and Lowell shares a lot of aesthetic similarities with Stevens’ less bombastic arrangements—most similar to Seven Swans, his 2004 favorite that scaled back the pomp and circumstance he toyed with on his first “States” album about Michigan. An album dedicated to his late mother—who suffered from mental illness and drug addiction, prior to her death in 2012. It’s also dedicated to his step-father, who currently assists Stevens with the label he runs, Asthmatic Kitty.

To say Carrie and Lowell “sure is a Sufjan Stevens album,” is both an accurate description of the record as well as one that possibly sells it short, since I think I am in the minority of people that have no fucks to give about this record—with that being said, I would like to congratulate anyone that finds meaning or enjoyment from listening to this (because I sure didn’t) and I’d like to personally congratulate Sufjeezy himself for making what will certainly be one of 2015’s most uninteresting records.

The thing about Carrie and Lowell is that in its conscious effort to be sparse, it becomes rather sterile and bland. It’s not unpleasant to the ears—Steven’s multi-tracked vocals are melodious, sure, and the gentle finger plucking of the acoustic guitar and piano plunking are easy on the ears. They are a little too easy on the ears. The songs become somewhat undistinguishable from one another—because there are no defining characteristics that make one more memorable than the other.

The album opens with a bit of a sense of whimsy—something Stevens is known to incorporate into his material. “Death With Dignity” clips along quickly, coasting on Stevens’ plaintive vocals and dueling acoustic guitars. It’s catchy, which is an interesting trick, since the song is directly addressing his mother. Despite how catchy it is, there’s not much of this song that stuck with me, though I will admit that Stevens’ ability to dress up something serious into an acoustic pop jaunt like this is admirable.

The plucking picks up again right away with “Should Have Known Better” (not a Richard Marx cover, unfortunately), then later again on “The Only Thing,” and “Eugene.”  Despite Stevens having abandoned his “50 States Project” years ago, to some extent, Carrie and Lowell is about Oregon, where he lived with his mother and step-father at some point in his childhood, and it’s an album that while packed with emotionally charged, somewhat stark (and sometimes pseudo-Christian) imagery from Stevens, it’s a record that has, pretty much, completely failed to resonate with me as a listener.

The record was released on the final day of March, and it had leaked about two weeks or more prior to that. As I had mentioned earlier, I had no intention of listening to it, even for review purposes, but after a glowing cosign from my friend, I thought, well, I guess I should give it a try.

It’s usually a bad sign when you can’t even make it through the first song all the way without scrunching up your face, internally asking what it is you are exactly hearing. That was what happened to me with Carrie and Lowell. It’s also usually a bad sign when a malaise descends upon you as you listen to a record, and time seems to slow down to a crawl—which is, again, what happened to me here.

I was never, like, the world’s biggest Sufjeezy fan after I was introduced to him during my final year in college—but I liked a bulk of what I heard from both the Michigan and Illinois records, as well as some of the less-religious material from Seven Swans. The truth is that this kind of cloying indie folk, or whatever we’re calling it—well it’s hard to “take this with you” as you grow older. For me, I think I’ve aged out of Sufjan Stevens, despite the fact that people, I’m sure who are older than I am, would still earnestly listen to a record like this and find merit in it—the NPR crowd that turn up the radio when “Chicago” comes on, rather than finding something else on the dial.

Stevens himself has grown up in the last decade—no longer writing songs with preposterously long titles in an effort to be cute or “different.” But despite that, he cannot escape the kind of youthful naivety of his songwriting, something that keeps this from being an album that will age well, and something that keeps it from being an urgent, interesting listen.  

Carrie and Lowell is out now via Asthmatic Kitty.