“Fourth of July,” the centerpiece of Sufjan Stevens’ latest album — the stripped-down, Elliott Smith-esque Carrie & Lowell — is as intimate and revealing as anything in the crafty singer/songwriter’s songbook. It’s about Stevens’ long-estranged mother, the “Carrie” from the album’s title, who died of stomach cancer in 2012. Spare and moody, “Fourth of July” floats by like an almost surreal dream, as minimal keyboard atmospherics and Stevens’ hushed voice relay what it was like to sit at his mother’s death bed, culminating with the repeated phrase, “We’re all gonna die.”
“With this record, I needed to extract myself out of this environment of make-believe,” Stevens said in an interview with Pitchfork earlier this year. “It’s something that was necessary for me to do in the wake of my mother’s death — to pursue a sense of peace and serenity in spite of suffering. It’s not really trying to say anything new or prove anything or innovate. It feels artless, which is a good thing. This is not my art project; this is my life.”
Stevens’ vast imagination and unique, multi-faceted talents informed a rush of records in the early 2000s, each different from the last, culminating in 2005’s Illinois, a lush, eclectic 22-song extravaganza that topped many year-end lists (including Pitchfork’s) and left the Detroit native’s fans clamoring for more.
Yet despite staying busy with various projects, Stevens had put out only one proper album — 2010’s densely-layered, electronically-driven The Age of Adz — in the decade prior to Carrie & Lowell’s release early this year, the sign of a restless artist who has little time for conventional expectations.
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This article appears in Nov 11-17, 2015.
