Album Review: Sufjan Stevens -- Carrie & Lowell

Sufjan Stevens’ seventh album, Carrie & Lowell is his time-warp moment – a marriage of old and young, of stylistic flashback and funereal maturity.

Sonically sparse and inward-looking, the woodland guitars and knitted vocals sound like a slow spiral curling into itself. Everything is muted and time-worn: synth a dull throb, like soft coins dropping, horns like spectres, strings with sharp edges. The new maudlin Stevens rhymes “Fourth of July” with “we’re all going to die”, but this is still his most accessible work for years, a mausoleum-esque beauty.