Sufjan Stevens: Carrie & Lowell

Bombast was yesterday. Carrie & Lowell, the new album from Sufjan Stevens, is a recollection of the personal kind. Intimate and overwhelming. The album named after Stevens' mother and stepfather - is a return to Stevens' folk music Roots. The 11 songs deal thematically with life and death, love and The loss and the struggle of the artist, the love in all its beauty and To understand ugliness. Carrie & Lowell was recorded by Stevens yourself. With Casey Foubert, Laura Veirs, Nedelle Torrisi, Sean Carey, Ben Lester and Thomas Bartlett. Stevens, Bartlett and Pat Dillet mixed it up. Sufjan Stevens currently lives in Brooklyn, NY. His penchant for epic concepts moved him to two states albums (Michigan & Illinois), a collection of sacred and biblical songs (Seven Swans), an electronic album for the animals of the Chinese zodiac (Enjoy Your Rabbit), two Christmas box sets (Songs for Christmas, vol. 1-5 and Silver & Gold, vol. 6-10) and a groundbreaking tone poem commissioned by the Brooklyn Academy of Music, BAM, for the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway (The BQE). In 2010 Stevens released a format-breaking EP (All Delighted People) as well as the full-length album The Age of Adz, a collection of songs at least partly inspired by Outsider artist Royal Robertson.