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Sufjan Stevens' Carrie & Lowell
Upon the release of Sufjan Stevens' seventh studio album, Carrie & Lowell, two divergent groups found themselves as strange the LGBTQIA+ community and American evangelical Christians. Both were united in praise for Stevens' beautifully melancholic music.
Critically acclaimed as one of the best albums of 2015, the elegiac and intimate record about the death of Sufjan's estranged mother reflects the musician's own paradoxical posture-Carrie & Lowell is both sacred and profane, Christian and queer, traditional and progressive, despairing and hopeful.
Theologian and cultural critic Joel Mayward considers Carrie & Lowell as a mystical metamodern memento mori, Sufjan's symphonic (as opposed to systematic) approach to the questions of mortality, sexuality, and God. Fusing critical observations with personal narrative, Mayward examines the unique audience reception of Carrie & Lowell and the questions it in a world of division, how might Stevens' affecting music act as a bridge of love between seemingly irreconcilable communities? As Carrie & Lowell reminds us of the painful truth that “we're all gonna die,” perhaps it also offers a glimpse of transcendence and hope on this side of death.
Critically acclaimed as one of the best albums of 2015, the elegiac and intimate record about the death of Sufjan's estranged mother reflects the musician's own paradoxical posture-Carrie & Lowell is both sacred and profane, Christian and queer, traditional and progressive, despairing and hopeful.
Theologian and cultural critic Joel Mayward considers Carrie & Lowell as a mystical metamodern memento mori, Sufjan's symphonic (as opposed to systematic) approach to the questions of mortality, sexuality, and God. Fusing critical observations with personal narrative, Mayward examines the unique audience reception of Carrie & Lowell and the questions it in a world of division, how might Stevens' affecting music act as a bridge of love between seemingly irreconcilable communities? As Carrie & Lowell reminds us of the painful truth that “we're all gonna die,” perhaps it also offers a glimpse of transcendence and hope on this side of death.
- GenresMusic
160 pages, Paperback
Published November 13, 2025
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Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
January 18, 2026
I probably owe this book a longer write up, but it’s been a long day. My love for Carrie and Lowell is so intimate and dear to me, it’s something I don’t really c’discuss with most people. Reading this wonderful and nuanced exploration only increased my love for that album.
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December 28, 2025I think writing about and understanding sufjan is a really difficult task because he so clearly says
exactly what he wants to say in his music. to even discuss sufjan outside the precisely constructed, complex bounds of his work can easily feel superfluous, like a form of engagement his work transcends. he is not a celebrity, artist, or musician so much as a saint. there is something really sacred about him.
this book is a really solid and insightful effort to parse carrie & lowell through queer studies, theology, and personal history. it is very well-researched and worth the read alone for how it elucidates the album’s many references and metaphors drawn from the geography and history of oregon. made me appreciate even more fully what an excellent and rigorous songwriter sufjan is. he allows every element of a song to exist so multidimensionally, serve so many purposes and interpretations, that they really demand biblical comparison.
this clashes, then, with the impulse to interpret carrie & lowell biographically. it’s impossible to avoid when taking on a project like this, but the rawness of the album requires a really delicate and sensitive interpreter. this is handled better in some chapters than others, but this author brings a really deep reverence to writing about sufjan that made it such a beautiful and meditative read.
this was the first 33 1/3 book I have read so I’m not that familiar with this format, but the blend of academic writing, memoir, and cultural criticism didn’t always work for me. there is a clear academic adherence to an overarching argument that can clash with its direct emotional appeals and makes some of the passages sound a bit rote, because they’re trying so clearly to prove rather than just describe. the disparate pieces feel a little slapped together and don’t allow this book to be more than the sum of its parts, but I would absolutely recommend it to any sufjan fan.
I hope this is the first of many books about him! it was also the most thoughtful gift I received for christmas this year and a really great way to spend the weird days between holidays.
exactly what he wants to say in his music. to even discuss sufjan outside the precisely constructed, complex bounds of his work can easily feel superfluous, like a form of engagement his work transcends. he is not a celebrity, artist, or musician so much as a saint. there is something really sacred about him.
this book is a really solid and insightful effort to parse carrie & lowell through queer studies, theology, and personal history. it is very well-researched and worth the read alone for how it elucidates the album’s many references and metaphors drawn from the geography and history of oregon. made me appreciate even more fully what an excellent and rigorous songwriter sufjan is. he allows every element of a song to exist so multidimensionally, serve so many purposes and interpretations, that they really demand biblical comparison.
this clashes, then, with the impulse to interpret carrie & lowell biographically. it’s impossible to avoid when taking on a project like this, but the rawness of the album requires a really delicate and sensitive interpreter. this is handled better in some chapters than others, but this author brings a really deep reverence to writing about sufjan that made it such a beautiful and meditative read.
this was the first 33 1/3 book I have read so I’m not that familiar with this format, but the blend of academic writing, memoir, and cultural criticism didn’t always work for me. there is a clear academic adherence to an overarching argument that can clash with its direct emotional appeals and makes some of the passages sound a bit rote, because they’re trying so clearly to prove rather than just describe. the disparate pieces feel a little slapped together and don’t allow this book to be more than the sum of its parts, but I would absolutely recommend it to any sufjan fan.
I hope this is the first of many books about him! it was also the most thoughtful gift I received for christmas this year and a really great way to spend the weird days between holidays.
January 29, 2026
An interesting read about the queer and Christian themes in Carrie and Lowell. It was held back by two major things:
1.Carrie and Lowell bring a near perfect work of art that speaks for itself
2.Sufjan Stevens being a private person so there's not much to uncover behind the scenes.
1.Carrie and Lowell bring a near perfect work of art that speaks for itself
2.Sufjan Stevens being a private person so there's not much to uncover behind the scenes.
July 22, 2026
Fantastic observations about such a spectacular album. Really helped me understand the more complex metaphors in the album and has helps me listen in a completely new way.
June 20, 2026
Joel Mayward uses the theoretical framework of metamodernism to address Sufjan Stevens’ landmark album ‘Carrie and Lowell’. Boiled down, metamodernism classifies works with a “surplus of possible meanings”. Mayward spends the majority of this short book considering the “possible meanings” of Sufjan’s album, regularly pointing out the seemingly contentious appeal of the record for both Christians and members of the LGBTQ+ community. There’s too much made of the bridge between religious and queer people throughout the analysis. Fans of Sufjan usually stem from one, the other or both and generally accept the cross-appeal from the communities. Mayward seems in awe of this and somewhat tries to identify why.
I say somewhat because the book is a mess. Despite the confines of the 33 1/3 series, consisting of pocket-sized books generally under 200 pages, Mayward attempts to overstuff his work with the following: 1) general looks at Oregon history/figures named in ‘Carrie and Lowell’, 2) analysis of lyrical content, 3) analysis of musical production, 4) biographical content regarding Sufjan, 5) how this album has played a part in Mayward’s own darkest times, particularly when it comes to almost losing his son and meeting his birth mother. Just one of these five strands could easily fill this 135 pocket-sized page book. All five render it a jolting and surface-level experience.
The book is strongest when it focuses on the album itself. Looking in detail at lyrical and musical detailing, and drawing out the narrative thread of ‘Carrie and Lowell’. Mayward oftentimes adds far too much theoretical framework - attempting to explain Christian mysticism, metamodernism, the Kubler-Ross stages of grief and Christian theology within a handful of words before returning back to the song the chapter is meant to be focusing on. However, when he goes into elucidating interesting details about the music (how there’s an air-conditioner hum in certain songs, how the tracklist was sequenced by one of Sufjan’s friends, how this could have ended up being his Oregon album), the book proves its worth. This is what I came into the text expecting and it’s what I’ll most take out of the work when I’m listening to Sufjan’s album in future. There’s a resistance on Mayward’s part to fully spell out his own reading of the songs (despite his insistence of telling us everything else about his life story), and so he contends with briefly shining light on the various ways the record can be interpreted. I do think he was remiss not to use the Trinity as a stronger framework. Most of the songs on ‘Carrie and Lowell’ can be interpreted as being about Carrie, a lover or God. Mayward writes about the Trinity in the outro of the book, yet fails to tie it concretely to the tripartite approach Sufjan takes with the ambiguity of his lyrics.
Insights into Mayward’s personal life were interesting, though with so few words to really dive into this album, they get in the way of more useful analysis. There was a very, very strange section where Mayward goes in detail to assert he is not homophobic and to denounce Christian homophobia, something which felt unacademic and inappropriate in the wider context of the work. No one thought a man writing an analysis on Sufjan Stevens and continually referencing ‘Call Me By Your Name’ and the 2019 Pride singles was a homophobe.
All in all, there’s some good stuff to take away here. However, Mayward needed a clearer view of what he writing getting into this. He’s bitten off more than he can chew, and I would have liked to have come away with more insight into the record than I got. Though maybe that’s the point at the end of the day. The main thing I walked away with from this book was an understanding that ‘Carrie and Lowell’ is a multi-dimensional album, with metamodern lyricism that can lead the listener into any number of interpretations. Perhaps further analysis into it would be redundant.
I say somewhat because the book is a mess. Despite the confines of the 33 1/3 series, consisting of pocket-sized books generally under 200 pages, Mayward attempts to overstuff his work with the following: 1) general looks at Oregon history/figures named in ‘Carrie and Lowell’, 2) analysis of lyrical content, 3) analysis of musical production, 4) biographical content regarding Sufjan, 5) how this album has played a part in Mayward’s own darkest times, particularly when it comes to almost losing his son and meeting his birth mother. Just one of these five strands could easily fill this 135 pocket-sized page book. All five render it a jolting and surface-level experience.
The book is strongest when it focuses on the album itself. Looking in detail at lyrical and musical detailing, and drawing out the narrative thread of ‘Carrie and Lowell’. Mayward oftentimes adds far too much theoretical framework - attempting to explain Christian mysticism, metamodernism, the Kubler-Ross stages of grief and Christian theology within a handful of words before returning back to the song the chapter is meant to be focusing on. However, when he goes into elucidating interesting details about the music (how there’s an air-conditioner hum in certain songs, how the tracklist was sequenced by one of Sufjan’s friends, how this could have ended up being his Oregon album), the book proves its worth. This is what I came into the text expecting and it’s what I’ll most take out of the work when I’m listening to Sufjan’s album in future. There’s a resistance on Mayward’s part to fully spell out his own reading of the songs (despite his insistence of telling us everything else about his life story), and so he contends with briefly shining light on the various ways the record can be interpreted. I do think he was remiss not to use the Trinity as a stronger framework. Most of the songs on ‘Carrie and Lowell’ can be interpreted as being about Carrie, a lover or God. Mayward writes about the Trinity in the outro of the book, yet fails to tie it concretely to the tripartite approach Sufjan takes with the ambiguity of his lyrics.
Insights into Mayward’s personal life were interesting, though with so few words to really dive into this album, they get in the way of more useful analysis. There was a very, very strange section where Mayward goes in detail to assert he is not homophobic and to denounce Christian homophobia, something which felt unacademic and inappropriate in the wider context of the work. No one thought a man writing an analysis on Sufjan Stevens and continually referencing ‘Call Me By Your Name’ and the 2019 Pride singles was a homophobe.
All in all, there’s some good stuff to take away here. However, Mayward needed a clearer view of what he writing getting into this. He’s bitten off more than he can chew, and I would have liked to have come away with more insight into the record than I got. Though maybe that’s the point at the end of the day. The main thing I walked away with from this book was an understanding that ‘Carrie and Lowell’ is a multi-dimensional album, with metamodern lyricism that can lead the listener into any number of interpretations. Perhaps further analysis into it would be redundant.
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March 4, 2026Finished this a couple weeks ago but forgot to log it. A really fascinating look at one of the greatest albums ever made. It’s such a shame that this book was finished before Sufjan’s essay was published alongside the 10th anniversary pressings of Carrie and Lowell because not having that perspective makes that book feel a little incomplete. However, this coupled with Sufjan declining to do any interviews for this book lend it an interesting perspective all its own. I love the structure where the author takes each song and describes the literal things Sufjan references with the songs, then interprets the songs, and then applies them to his own life. I honestly found the author’s personal stories just as interesting as his album analysis. This book being very unofficial (Asthmatic Kitty wouldn’t even let the author or Pitchfork use the official album artwork for the cover, making this an outlier in the series) lends it the ability to delve into very personal stories outside of the album, which I think drives home the beauty of Carrie and Lowell: we’re all gonna die. We all have beautiful, horrifying stories completely our own that make us who we are. Also, I really appreciated some of the technical/logistical background at the beginning of the book. I seriously had no idea what a big role Doveman had in turning this into the album we know.
April 30, 2026
Realmente 3.5 pero no me deja y me da pena el autor. Pensaba que el libro sería mucho más centrado en el álbum en sí. Esperaba que se analizasen a fondo las letras, ritmos, instrumentos y mientras sí que lo hace. También extrapola muchísimo (incluso demasiado). Habla de cosas demasiado intensas y es como que se saca ensayos y libros de teólogos y místicos para algo que aparentemente no lo necesitaría. Es como que trata el disco como si fuese muchísimo más pensado de lo que yo creo que es.
El autor también combina el análisis con su testimonio, contando un poco su “trágica” vida, lo cual es original y está bien. También es verdad que creo que idolatra al cantante, o sea incluso se refiere a él como “St. Sufjan” lo cual me parece excesivo. Y deja muchos rastros de una idolatría que luego se contradice mucho con el intento de mostrar a Sufjan como una persona más.
Aun así, el hecho de que extrapole tanto, da mucho que pensar y he aprendido mucho, de ahí las estrellas. El autor sabe muchísimo del tema y en general ha sido una lectura muy fresca, nada difícil de leer pero muy enriquecedora y distinta. Un buen acompañante para las horas incansables en el cercanías.
(me da pereza copiar las quotes, pero he subrayado bastante)
El autor también combina el análisis con su testimonio, contando un poco su “trágica” vida, lo cual es original y está bien. También es verdad que creo que idolatra al cantante, o sea incluso se refiere a él como “St. Sufjan” lo cual me parece excesivo. Y deja muchos rastros de una idolatría que luego se contradice mucho con el intento de mostrar a Sufjan como una persona más.
Aun así, el hecho de que extrapole tanto, da mucho que pensar y he aprendido mucho, de ahí las estrellas. El autor sabe muchísimo del tema y en general ha sido una lectura muy fresca, nada difícil de leer pero muy enriquecedora y distinta. Un buen acompañante para las horas incansables en el cercanías.
(me da pereza copiar las quotes, pero he subrayado bastante)
April 10, 2026
As someone raised Catholic but who rejected organised religion very early on, I was intrigued by the author's approach to Carrie and Lowell, an album I love and which is inextricable linked with my own process of grieving – the sorting through of my late father's estate (C&L was released less than a year after his death). While Mayward's position makes sense, it's definitely one of the more left-field 33 1/3s. I enjoyed the inclusion of philosophy (Ricœur is one of my favourites, though the promised discussion of personal narrative formation was never quite realised) and theology (I learnt a lot). However, the writing, together with the occasional hagiographic elements (see especially Outro: The Greatest Gift) let this down a bit. The chapter openings (vignettes on Oregonian settings) started to feel a bit formulaic after a while. The weaving of personal narrative created a nice counterpoint to the theoretical sections but the segues between these sections could have been better massaged. The absence of cooperation of the artist in the writing process is neither here nor there, however there are times where Mayward slightly oversteps in terms of putting words in Sufjan's mouth.
August 26, 2026
I'm not sure what excited me more - realizing that this specific book exists or that it's part of a series. As a nerdy music fan who has spent years studying the nitty gritty details of album production, I couldn't ask for more than a 130-page analysis of Sufjan Steven's magnum opus, Carrie and Lowell, an album that has fascinated me for years - gradually becoming an all-time favorite - and has also been a balm during one of the darkest years of my life. I love Joel Mayward's movie reviews, and he's the perfect person to write about this singularly confounding work; the number of parallels between the two mens' lives are frankly alarming. Mayward sees Sufjan not just as an indie folk star, but for what he really is (and has always been): a queer Christian mystic. Exploring the ways in which this landmark album opens pathways to understanding between Christian and LGBTQIA+ communities, Mayward frames it as a "meta-modern memento mori" that takes us through the valley of shadows, en route to deeper awe in the face of life's miracle and mystery. It's well worth a read, whether you're a theologian, philosopher, or just a nerdy fan of Sufjan's music. Better yet, give the record a spin!
July 17, 2026
All-timer album, reviewed by a George Fox professor (CCCU core). Book appropriately focuses heavily on Sufjan’s queer spirituality in addition to his relationship to his mother and the state of Oregon. Also includes the author’s experience of his own adoption and the touches with extreme health scares of his child, making for a nice interweaving of personal narrative with the text of the album. Will need to pick up a few more of these 33 1/3 books.
December 11, 2025
‘Within this change of heart lies the eponymous confession of holistic yearning interspersed between each line: all of me wants all of you. Is Sufjan singing about his mother, a lover, or God? To answer this, we have to more directly consider the queer imagery which imbues Carrie & Lowell and, indeed, all of Sufjan Stevens's art.’ (p. 39)
September 22, 2026
It’s a bummer to start a book about one of your favorite albums, only to immediately realize it’s not going to be a fun read. This was interesting. I learned a lot. Sufjan is elusive. But geez, man. Save the essay for academia. This tiny book was so unnecessarily dense it took a month to get through.
January 31, 2026
3.5! Maaayyyybe helpful for my thesis? But ultimately I love love love the repeated point that something (for example a Sufjan Stevens song) can be about (queer) erotic love, and also God, and also family.
April 19, 2026
Joel Mayward's rumination on Sufjan Stevens' album Carrie & Lowell is much like the album in some ways, introspective, plainly spoken, heart breaking in places, but also offering hope while refraining from giving overt answers.
December 26, 2025
Great deep dive in the album and sufjan
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March 26, 2026goated album i heart sufjan stevens ok
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July 11, 2026dang.. christians are crazy in a way i could never be... perhaps im in my dark night of the soul???
August 20, 2026
Sufjan Stevens (and specifically this album) are so core to who I am, so of course I would love this book. Loved the in-depth exploration of queerness and Christianity within this album. Only downside is that Sufjan is by nature extremely private so there was very little to explore on that front.
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews