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Carrie & Lowell (10th Anniversary Edition)

Stevens: reassessing an album of forlorn loveliness

EMMANUAL AFOLABI

ASTHMATIC KITTY

9/10

Understated beauty packs a big emotional punch, 10 years on. By Sharon O’Connell

AFTER 2010’s The Age Of Adz, on which 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.

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’ album reaches 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 dextrous pastoral-pop number carried by a keysand-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.