REVIEW: Sufjan Stevens' Carrie and Lowell, Ten Years Later
Ten years after its release, I revisit Sufjan Stevens' Carrie and Lowell, an album about his late mother's mental illness, abandonment, and grief, that's held up a clear, honest mirror to my own life. I trace how Stevens' songwriting about Carrie evolved from anger on Michigan and Illinois to unconditional forgiveness, dig into the many alternate versions of 'Fourth of July,' and reproduce my very first attempt at music criticism: a Carrie and Lowell review I wrote as a teenager back in 2015.
here are a handful of albums that I've listened to front-to-back over and over hundreds of times throughout my life. These records are not only a collection of songs, but carry a powerful throughline from start to finish.
Death Cab for Cutie's *Transatlanticism*, Neutral Milk Hotel's *In the Aeroplane Over the Sea*, [The Mountain Goats'](https://brennan.day/be-prolific-accept-every-thought-mythologize-yourself-show-up/) *The Sunset Tree*, Joni Mitchell's *Blue*, Frank Ocean's *Blonde*, and Bright Eyes' *I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning*. If you've pegged me for a Tumblr-era /mu/core Millennial hipster, then you're more than correct. More recently, I've been listening to Little Simz *Sometimes I Might Be Introvert*, Phoebe Bridgers' *Punisher*, and Lizzy McAlpine's *Older (and Wiser)* the same way.
One of these albums that's had a profound influence on me and my life has been Sufjan Stevens' 7th LP, *Carrie and Lowell*, released back in 2015. I remember listening to the record on repeat each day after my pre-calc classes in summer school in grade 13.
This album is the harsh salt of reckoning in the wound and the balm and salve of catharsis, it is immeasurable grief, and yet it is also impossible forgiveness. It is the record I return to when I'm feeling at my lowest—not because it pulls me out of it, but because it provides me an honest, clear mirror.
For those unaware, the album is named after Stevens' late mother, Carrie, and his stepfather, Lowell Brams. Carrie suffered from schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and severe substance abuse, and she abandoned Sufjan and his siblings multiple times when he was very young.
In earlier albums, Stevens wrote about his mother in anger and resentment. On the 2003 Michigan album, Stevens confessed how ashamed he was of her on "Romulus." On the 2005 Illinois album, the song "The Seer's Tower" laments "oh, how she betrayed us!"
In his later years, Stevens partially reconnected with Carrie, though their relationship remained distant and complicated. Stevens spent a few summers with her and his stepfather in Oregon during his childhood, where a lot of the inspiration for the album came from.
The two had brief contact later in life, but Carrie died due to stomach cancer in 2012, which began the creation of the album. In this, we can view the record as an intimate documentary of grief, processing profound sorrow, childhood absence, and mortality.
Throughout the album, Stevens grapples with how he never had the ability to reconcile properly while Carrie was alive. Her death not only causes him to have a crisis of faith, but also causes him to question whether he should be alive at all. In the track "The Only Thing" Stevens lists out the many different ways he considered ending his life:
The only thing that keeps
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