American musician Sufjan Stevens’ new album, Carrie & Lowell explores vivid memories of his mother Carrie, who died of cancer in 2012, after suffering for years from schizophrenia and alcoholism.
Recording the record did not - immediately at least - prove cathartic for the singer who spent a shiftless childhood in Michigan.
“I was recording songs as a means of grieving, making sense of it,” he recently told the Guardian. “But the writing and recording wasn’t the salve I expected.
"I fell deeper and deeper into doubt and misery. It was a year of real darkness. In the past my work had a real reciprocity of resources – I would put something in and get something from it. But not this time.”
Carrie’s husband, Rasjid, Sufjan’s father, was a member of a religious group called Subud. Carrie and Rasjid were married for seven years. In 1976, when Stevens was one year old with three older siblings also to be looked after, Carrie abruptly departed.
His father eventually remarried, as did his mother, to a man named Lowell Brams. They split up when Stevens was around seven, and eventually divorced in 1984.
However, Stevens and his stepfather remained close and together they manage the record label Asthmatic Kitty, which has just released Carrie & Lowell.
Watch the video for Should Have Known Better, which concerns his mother and her departure from the family, with lyrics published below the video:
