Oh, to see without my eyes the first time that I listened to Carrie & Lowell. I was sitting in front of my laptop, crying an Atlantic of tears. As well as seven previously unreleased tracks, the 10th anniversary edition of the album includes an essay by Sufjan Stevens, in which he writes that making the album was “painful, humiliating, and an utter miscarriage of bad intentions.” In a recent interview he said nothing to contradict this savage self-review: the album is “just a hot mess” and a “creative and artistic failure.” However, most artists would, er, sell their own mother if it meant creating a masterpiece as loved so profoundly and by so many as Carrie & Lowell.
The cover of the 10th anniversary edition is a full-framed version of the original Polaroid, which reveals the album title written in a child’s handwriting. It’s another, deeper, even more personal insight into Stevens’ world of grief, as are the Carrie & Lowell demos that make up four of the seven bonus tracks. The first one, ‘Death With Dignity (Demo)’, has just been released as a single. The video is a heartbreaking montage of family photos and videos, and is the ying to the Adam Curtis yang. On the demo, Stevens is so close to the mic that it’s like he’s whispering in your ear – whispering poetry such as “frankincense and flowers on the table” and “silhouette of the cedar”. You can hear the heave of the piano pedal and the sound of it returning to its resting place as a foot is lifted.
The vocal on ‘Should Have Known Better (Demo)’ is more hesitant and on its own, as opposed to the wash of multi-tracked vocals on the album version. A Strawberry Fields organ replaces the twanged and reverbed guitar, and there is what sounds like a slowed down Super Mario soundtrack with Irish flute. ‘Eugene (Demo)‘ is less sparse than the album version and has the happy glimmer of ‘Maggie May’. The majestic swell of sound that follows the devastating lines “I want to save you from your sorrow” is missing from ‘The Only Thing (Demo)’. However, the descending melody still whacks you in the gut.
Has there been a better marriage of song and film than ‘Mystery of Love’ and Call Me By Your Name? One could make a case for ‘Eye of the Tiger’ and Rocky III, but one would lose. ‘Mystery of Love (Demo)’ is truly stripped back, whereas the film version is ethereal and, well, cinematic. ‘Wallowa Lake Monster’ was an ‘outtake’ recorded during the making of Carrie & Lowell and included on The Greatest Gift, released in 2017. On ‘Wallowa Lake Monster (Version 2)’ the guitar in the first half is replaced by cascading piano lines and the second half still sounds like a Sigur Rós/M83 collab with a Thomas Newman ending.
In the original ‘Fourth of July’, Stevens’ imagined conversation with his dying mother is centre stage, accompanied by plodding, funereal chords and gasps and shimmers of heaven. “We’re all gonna die,” then the track abruptly stops. ‘Fourth of July (Version 4)’ is partly a duet with a female vocalist, whose presence seems to offer reassurance. Instead of an abrupt ending, the track opens up into a whale-in-a-cave howl then evolves into a Hans Zimmer/Godspeed You! Black Emperor epic. It’s easy to assume that this version wasn’t chosen for Carrie & Lowell because it’s almost 14 minutes long, though another explanation is that the version we already know is so painfully, perfectly raw.
Perhaps Stevens hates Carrie & Lowell precisely because it is so personal, so intrusive. And yet, that Polaroid. These demos. As someone wrote on YouTube, Stevens is a ‘grief counsellor’ as much as a songwriting genius. “We’re all gonna die,” though Carrie & Lowell never will.
Carrie & Lowell (10th Anniversary Edition) is out on 30th May via Asthmatic Kitty
Sufjan Stevens: Instagram | Bandcamp
Review by Neil Laurenson
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