Sufjan Stevens – Carrie & Lowell (10th Anniversary Edition)

After 2010’s The Age Of Adz, on which Sufjan Stevens ditched his signature indie-folk banjo and recorders for glitchy beatscapes and experimental pop, Carrie & Lowell landed as a hushed and heartbreakingly raw excavation of the darkness that enveloped him following his mother Carrie’s death in 2012. Its songs, attempts to make sense of her troubled life and their relationship, are among the most forlorn in his catalogue. They’re also some of the loveliest.

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In the decade since its release the album has lost none of its soulful resonance or soft-glowing beauty. It’s now been updated with seven bonus tracks and a new essay in which Stevens addresses both his mother’s historical anguish and his own. That knot involves his inheritance of her depression as well as the vulnerability that overwhelmed him after her passing. He also passes harsh judgement on his creative response at the time, describing his attempt to map his memories of Carrie using music as “foolhardy” and the result as “a hot mess”.

The album is not without parallel: Beck’s mournful Sea Change is an acoustic set born from the break-up with his longtime partner and in striking contrast to Midnite Vultures before it, while Young Prayer saw Panda Bear deliver a set of delicate meditations on his late father’s life. There’s no scale for measuring emotional potency, of course, but Stevens’ albumreaches a high level of personal affect via its mix of memories (many unreliable), impressions, vivid imagery and overlapping thoughts. Though not every song is directly concerned with his mother’s death, it’s the existential rallying point.

“I don’t know where to begin,” admits Stevens over dulcet banjo-picking, not 30 seconds into the set, but begin he does: “Death With Dignity” is more deceptively light and summer-day idyllic than any song with the lines, “I forgive you, mother, I can hear you/And I long to be near you/But every road leads to an end” has a right to be. It’s ushered out by backing vocals of an almost Gregorian calm and a single ripple of lap steel. Every bit as gentle, though overshadowed by regret is “Should Have Known Better”, a dexterous pastoral-pop number carried by a keys-and-synth melody, with base notes of woodwind. The gorgeous, gauzy “All Of Me Wants All Of You” sees the aspect and tone shift, not least of all via the line, “You checked your text while I masturbated”, one of several reminders on the record that desire, grief and dissociation are often intertwined.

“Fourth Of July” suggests nothing so much as fireworks soft-exploding in the infinite blackness of deep space, its melody fading out as Stevens repeats the incontrovertible truth: “We’re all gonna die.” The title track, which recalls Vashti Bunyan and CSN but adds a peppy banjo motif and vaporous synth, is a flicker book of faded memories – a pear tree, blood on floorboards, a broken arm, Thorazine – while the guitar-picked “No Shade In The Shadow Of The Cross” has a desperate ache at its core: “Fuck me, I’m falling apart,” Stevens murmurs, as if in sudden realisation. The set closes with “Blue Bucket Of Gold”, which is exquisitely barely there, his voice gently rising and falling over a synth cloud as he acknowledges the often obstreperous nature of love and desire.

There are seven extra tracks accompanying the album, of which five are demos and two outtakes. The former are as in-ear sticky and direct as you’d expect, and forefront Stevens’ guitar and vocals accordingly: they include the charming “Should Have Known Better”, with flute detail, and “Mystery Of Love”, which eventually appeared in finished form on the soundtrack to Luca Guadagnino’s Call Me By Your Name. It plays as a bright-eyed, fingerpicked musing on the second of life’s great conundrums. “Wallowa Lake Monster”, with its Mercury Rev-like bloom, is an outtake lifted from 2017’s The Greatest Gift mixtape, while “Fourth Of July” is extended by a sombre orchestral passage to 14 quietly devastating minutes.

So soft and intimate at times that it’s almost spectral, Carrie & Lowell returned Stevens to the sounds of his earlier records, as might be expected of someone stuck deep in a spirit ditch. Though The Age Of Adz was a commercial success, even if he’d been tempted to repeat its ideas-stuffed exuberance, it was constitutionally impossible. In his essay, he describes the songwriting process for Carrie & Lowell as “painful, humiliating and an utter miscarriage of bad intentions”, also berating himself for “feigning insight and integrity” – clearly, his id, ego and superego were in turmoil. Stevens may still be living in the shadow of his catharsis but that turbulence abated. After Carrie…, of course, came The Ascension, a set of hyperpop bangers and luminous slow jams made with recovery in mind.