Sufjan Stevens “kind of embarrassed” by classic ‘Carrie & Lowell’

Sufjan Stevens has shared he was “embarrassed” by his seminal 2015 album ‘Carrie & Lowell’.

The acclaimed record was emotionally fraught, focusing much of its content on Stevens’ relationship to his estranged mother Carrie, who battled addiction and mental health issues before her passing in 2012.

Speaking to NPR ahead of the reissue’s arrival, the Michigan singer-songwriter said the original LP was “evidence of creative and artistic failure” from his vantage point. “I was trying to make sense of something that is senseless,” he explained. “I felt that I was being manipulative and self-centered and solipsistic and self-loathing, and that the approach that I had taken to my work, which is to kind of create beauty from chaos, was failing me.

“It was very frustrating. And for the first time I realized that not everything can be sublimated into art, that some things just remain unsolvable, or insoluble. I think I was really just frustrated by even trying to make sense of the experience of grief through the songs.”

The comments came ahead of the artist sharing a 10th anniversary reissue of his 2015 album. Out now via Asthmatic Kitty Records, the new version includes previously unheard tracks and is available for order here.

To mark the announcement, he shared a demo version of ‘Mystery Of Love’ – a track from the original sessions that was later re-worked and re-recorded for Luca Guadagnino’s Call Me By Your Name. A reflective essay was also included in the deluxe edition, and sees Stevens reflect on the creation of the album.

In it, he described it’s recording as “painful, humiliating, and an utter miscarriage of bad intentions”. When this quote was put to him by NPR, he conceded that he was “kind of embarrassed by this album”.

“Because,” he continued, “I sort of feel like I don’t have any authority over my mother and her life or experience or her death. All I have is speculation and my imagination and my own misery, and in trying to make sense of it all, I kind of felt like it didn’t really resolve anything.”

When asked if he had regrets about making the album, he agreed, saying he felt bad. “It’s just a bummer that my mother’s not alive and can’t speak for herself,” he added. “What would she say about all this? Maybe she would be proud. I’ll never know.”

In 2015, NME awarded the record four-and-a-half stars, writing: “Pruned to a relatively tight 44-and-a-half minutes, ‘Carrie & Lowell’ – with the couple pictured on the sleeve – is one of Sufjan’s most fat-free and consistently stunning records, but also his darkest.

“There are no brass fanfares like 2006’s ‘Adlai Stevenson’ or fancy-dress-party tunes like 2005’s ‘Chicago’. This is downbeat and delicate alt-folk drenched, very sweetly, in blood, grief and desolation.”

His latest album arrived in 2023 in the form of ‘Javelin’.

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