On his emotionally devastating new album Carrie & Lowell, Sufjan Stevens explores the terrible loss he felt at the death of his mother. He talks to Dave Eggers about how difficult it was to make, his dysfunctional childhood and how playing the songs live will be a joyful reliefAs the slow grey East River passes in the distance, as the white smoke from some faraway factory rises into the white winter sky, as a lone man in a grey jacket wanders through the power plant across the street below us, Sufjan Stevens, inside his studio four floors up, shows Technicolor home movies of his family from decades before. A collection of ghosts moves jauntily to unheard music.There’s a grandfather, there’s an aunt, an uncle, a cousin. “That’s Carrie,” he says, pointing to his mother. In the short Super-8 clips, she’s a pretty young woman with dark hair and big, wary eyes. In one film she’s standing with siblings behind a birthday cake, grimacing at the camera, uncomfortable being seen. In another, she’s on the beach, again wary, occasionally smiling. Finally, in the last film, she’s dancing slowly with a tall man, almost a head taller and far lighter of spirit, a bright-eyed man with a newly shaven head. This is Stevens’s father Rasjid, and the film, as far as Stevens can tell, is of their wedding night. Carrie and Rasjid dance slowly, her head on his chest, and face aglow, while he looks around, grinning at the camera, at Carrie’s Greek relatives, who dance merrily around them. His eyes wide and his head recently shaved, he seems eager to please. Carrie, though, has her eyes closed, her ear to her new husband’s heart, content to escape to some inner place. Related: Sufjan Stevens – Carrie & Lowell: album stream Continue reading...
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