2015 · Album
A voice at arm’s length in a dim room, singing as softly as a person can and still be heard.
Sufjan Stevens’ 2015 album Carrie & Lowell, released on Asthmatic Kitty, is about his mother Carrie and his stepfather Lowell Brams, and it sounds like a record made for the hour after everyone else has gone to bed. The voice is hushed, the arrangements are close and bare, and nothing in it reaches for your attention. You lean in because the record has made itself small enough to need you. That intimacy is the whole achievement, and it does not fade on the tenth listen.
Play it whole, with the lights low and no one talking over it. It is an album that asks you to sit still, and it rewards the people who do, because its quiet is not empty but full of the feeling a family leaves in a room. It is best late, in November, with a glass beside you and someone close enough to hear it too. Let the last track finish before you say a word. Then you will know what it was for.
VERDICT · A hushed, close record about a mother and a stepfather; play it whole, late and low, and keep the room quiet until the last track ends.
POUR · A glass of calvados, neat.
Pairs with: Listening to Carrie & Lowell in the Dark
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