Carrie & Lowell (10th Anniversary Edition): A Comprehensive Review

Grief does not follow one defining melody, but Sufjan Stevens manages to find it in his 2015 album CARRIE & LOWELL- an album that, even a decade later, serves as a melancholic, raw, and eternally relevant encapsulation of confusion amidst complex loss.

CARRIE & LOWELL opens with the song "Death with Dignity," a lyrically compelling dedication backed by the tune of indie-folk guitar, where we quickly learn that the subject of Stevens' loss is his late mother: "I forgive you, mother, I can hear you / And I long to be near you." The most notable track to this album is "Fourth of July," an evocative stanza-by-stanza reflection on one of Sufjan Stevens' final conversations with his mother in the hospital. The song is simple in its melody, sung to the tune of a repetitive, poignant selection of piano chords. However, it is laden with questions from Stevens, emphasizing the uncertainty that comes with the passing of a loved one, the bleak certainty of the inevitable, and even begging the question: what do we do with the fragments of those we have lost?

The rest of the album continues with similar patterns of lyrical ruminations and revelations, lines like, "Should I tear my heart out now, everything I feel returns to you somehow" in the song "The Only Thing," or the repetition of the title in the track "All of Me Wants All of You" exemplifying how even those who are gone are carried with us. CARRIE & LOWELL does not come to a gentle conclusion- just as grief does not- rather, it leads the listener through a journey, one that may not be much more than Stevens' navigation of grief through him threading words into the void of his own loss.

It is most apparent through CARRIE & LOWELL that Sufjan Stevens possesses an incredible tact for coherently transforming emotion to sound. The album is critically acclaimed, ranking tenth in Billboard's Top 200 in 2015, and awarded second for the Top 50 Best Albums of 2015 by The Guardian. Now, ten years later, the reissue still serves as a widely relatable and timeless album devoted to the intricacies of the most unavoidable parts of the human experience.