Sufjan Stevens has never completely delved into his personal soul-wrenching tale of abandonment and quest for discovering his true self before because, quite frankly, it was probably too difficult. Carrie and Lowell, his ninth studio album, shares his heartbreaking story in full.
The singer-songwriter born in Detroit, Michigan spent much of his youth moving across the country with time spent in New York, Michigan and Oregon. He is also the founder of Asthmatic Kitty Records with his stepfather Lowell Brams.
In what may be the only way to begin an autobiographical account such as this, Stevens sings, “I don’t know where to begin,” repeatedly during the first track, “Death with Dignity.” His whispered, double-tracked words are surrounded by a brightly fingerpicked acoustic guitar before a piano gently enters.
The story begins to unfold in “Should Have Known Better” as Stevens reveals, “When I was three, three maybe four, she left us at that video store.” “She” is Carrie, Stevens’ mother who suffered from drug addiction, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. She abandoned Stevens as a child, leaving his stepfather, Lowell to raise Stevens for much of his youth.
There are many references to Oregon, especially Eugene, as places helped Stevens escape various times of difficulty. The song “Eugene” compares his swim instructor to a pastor baptizing him in the communal pools near Emerald Park. The father figure provides an even greater want for his distant mother, though, and what may have happened had he “never seen hysterical light from Eugene.”
The final two stanzas of “Eugene” provide the greatest insight into Stevens’ past, and the emotional dilemmas he overcame, or at least tamed through this album (his mother fought and lost a battle with stomach cancer in 2012):
“Still I pray to what I cannot see/ In the sprinkler I mark the evidence known from the start/ From the bed near your death, and all the machines that made a mess/ Far away the falcon flew/ Now I want to be near you.
“What’s left is only bittersweet/ For the rest of my life, admitting the best is behind me/ Now I’m drunk and afraid, wishing the world would go away/ What’s the point of singing songs if they’ll never even hear you?”
The point of singing songs that may never be heard is that sometimes, the soul-searching involved in writing them may lead the artist to a spine-chilling masterwork that improves with each listen, as Stevens has done here.
Simply listening to the sound of Stevens’ haunted whispering voice conveys the heartbreak and abandonment he felt as a young child, phrased like an accomplished poet. The lyrics and music serve as foils to each other on many songs, as the music shields the dark undertones of the lyrical content, making it an accessible yet poignant reminder of what lingering effects an abandoned child can feel through adulthood.
This is an album that can completely envelop you in its world and leave you in a trance-like state until it calmly fades into nothing at the finale, returning us to the world that Stevens has so gracefully created an escape from.
Follow Craig on Twitter: @wgwcraig