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Sufjan Stevens - Carrie & Lowell

Tony L

Administrator
I picked up a CD copy today and it's beautiful. I'm a big fan of his work anyway and this one fits at the more gentle and introverted end of it. Just superb songwriting and playing as ever, I guess it fits closest with Seven Swans from his back catalogue, but it's even better IMO. Available affordably on CD and vinyl.
 
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Listening to it now on vinyl, simply stunning. I must admit to being a fan and was very pleasantly surprised to see him as part of the National in November.

As Tony has said fantastic songwriting....
 
eh... its a bit samey.

Ok its good but its nothing like the splendidness of "Illinois" . Are any of his other albums similar in grandness and variety as that one?
 
eh... its a bit samey.

Ok its good but its nothing like the splendidness of "Illinois" . Are any of his other albums similar in grandness and variety as that one?

In a word, no. That doesn't make them bad just different. But "Illinois" is a masterpiece imo.
 
Agreed, Illinois is his best work that I've heard. A marvelous record.

I'm looking forward to giving Carrie & Lowell a listen for the first time tonight.
 
Big fan of that album, too.

Listening to Carrie & Lowell right now, it is beautiful.

He's one talented dude.
 
Hi all, new member here, so I hope you don't mind me jumping in on this one. I'm a big Sufjan fan, and basically love everything he's done to date.

Maybe I'm missing the point on this latest album, but to me it's a load of monotonous pap. Let's hope a few more listens brings me around.
 
Hi all, new member here, so I hope you don't mind me jumping in on this one. I'm a big Sufjan fan, and basically love everything he's done to date.

Maybe I'm missing the point on this latest album, but to me it's a load of monotonous pap. Let's hope a few more listens brings me around.

Stick with it! Sure, it's all around the same volume, density and tempo (gently meandering acoustic Americana), but it really is beautiful!
 
I found it very samey too. Nice to hear a track now and then, but not the whole album in one go...a bit like The Ramones in that respect.

(Is that the first time Sufjan has been compared to The Ramones do you think?)
 
In complete contrast to that, and much like Beck's 2014 offering, Carrie & Lowell is meant to be listened to from the very start to the very end. Perfectly scheduled album and not shuffle-friendly, IMHO.
 

I’ll bump this thread with this wonderful live performance that just popped up on my YouTube recommendations.

PS He absolutely amazes me. One of the best and most prolific pop/rock/folk/electronica or whatever the hell it is writers ever IMHO. Prince/Zappa-grade creativity that I find impossible to comprehend. He just churns out hour upon hour upon hour of genius-grade music, the recent The Ascension being spectacularly good, but just one great album in a huge catalogue. His father died very recently and his reaction was a five-album electronica box set. I’ve just ordered it.
 
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Convocations turned up today, I’ve pretty much finished the first listening, the last CD is on now. I’ve noticed this album has been panned in a lot of the music press, but I’m really liking it. It’s not as long as one would expect a five CD box to be, each disc is 30-35 minutes, so nice to have them broken up by concept rather than everything jammed onto two discs. It is quite remarkable in its own way, parts quite formal electronic music channelling Stockhausen, Subotnik etc, other parts would transcribe beautifully to string quartet etc, then there is an Eno aspect too, yet all the time it is so clearly Sufjan Stevens and couldn’t be anyone else. Fascinating to hear him give his ideas so much more space and time than usual. If everyone could turn grief and a year in lockdown into something this monumental the world would be a vastly better place. I suspect I’ll be playing this one a lot.

PS On first listen I rate this a lot higher than A Beginners Mind (which turned up last week and for me is nice enough, but a big step backwards from The Ascension).
 
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I also have it.

I should say that I do really like it—and the chutzpah that Stevens demonstrates by buying something like this...*

WaldorfQuantum_01-FAPESzukKU2wh03GyfTcuAOkD4VGaYFk.jpg


... and releasing a box set full of the kind of noodling I'd never suspect anyone would want to listen to!

I usually do this kind of stuff for a few day after I get a new instrument then park anything in a folder and get on with my 'proper' music (ha ha).

*I'm guessing it's a Waldorf Quantum. I can certainly get similar sounds from my Sequential Prophet X. I suspect the Moog One could do these kinds of sounds as well, but my feeling is digital oscillators with analog filters here. And a single instrument.

Eno would have taken years to do this kind of stuff on his DX7. If Stevens has done this on his Prophet 08 I take my hat off to him!

I admire musicians who let music breathe and take time to grow. I usually pack too much in right from the start.

Stephen
 
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I suspect he has a fair few synths and also likely uses plug-ins. He’s certainly developed his own sound pallet and voicing, I could spot him as easily as say Ulrich Schnauss, and that is not easy in a world full of lazy and fairly generic/retro electronica. I’m hearing wave-tables as well as analogue textures, so yes Waldorf is a good guess, as would be the recent reboot of the Korg Wavestation, but he’s finding something uniquely him in there. He’s also reusing sounds a fair bit, e.g. the is a fair bit of overlap between say Planetarium, The Ascension and the new 5xCD box, but knowing when to do that is part of creating a recognisable sound identity.
 
Plug-ins are a pathway to a million options. That's why I suspect it's a single (or few) instruments as that can be very liberating.

But yes, I'd have bought this in '72 in a heartbeat!

I need to make my Novatron 400/TR 808 album.

Stephen
 


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