Sufjan Stevens announces 10th anniversary reissue of classic ‘Carrie & Lowell’ with unheard tracks

Sufjan Stevens has announced a 10th anniversary reissue of his beloved 2015 album ‘Carrie & Lowell’, including previously unheard tracks.

The Michigan singer-songwriter will mark a decade since the record’s original release with ‘Carrie & Lowell (10th Anniversary Edition)’, to be released on May 30 via Asthmatic Kitty Records. You can pre-order it here.

To mark the announcement, Stevens has shared an unreleased demo version of ‘Mystery Of Love’, a track from the album’s original sessions that was later re-worked and re-recorded for Luca Guadagnino’s Call Me By Your Name. Listen to the spare, plaintive version below, with slightly altered lyrics.

The deluxe edition will feature an expanded double-LP album with seven bonus tracks, a 40-page art book and a new essay from Stevens. The new artwork features a zoomed-out Polaroid revealing the original artwork with a previously unseen caption written in a child’s handwriting – written by Sufjan’s sister Djamilah.

‘Carrie & Lowell (10th Anniversary Edition)’ tracklist: 

Disc 1: 

1. ‘Death with Dignity’
2. ‘Should Have Known Better’
3. ‘All of Me Wants All of You’
4. ‘Drawn To the Blood’
5. ‘Eugene’
6. ‘Fourth of July’
7. ‘The Only Thing’
8. ‘Carrie & Lowell’
9. ‘John My Beloved’
10. ‘No Shade in the Shadow of the Cross’
11. ‘Blue Bucket of Gold’

Disc 2: 

1. ‘Death with Dignity (Demo)’
2. ‘Should Have Known Better (Demo)’
3. ‘Eugene (Demo)’
4. ‘The Only Thing (Demo)’
5. ‘Mystery Of Love (Demo)’
6. ‘Wallowa Lake Monster (Version 2)’
7. ‘Fourth of July (Version 4)’

‘Carrie & Lowell’ was named after Stevens’ stepfather and his depressive, alcoholic and schizophrenic mother, who abandoned her family when Sufjan was 12 months old. Following her death in 2012, Sufjan decided to make his seventh album a stark exploration into their fractured relationship.

In 2015, NME awarded the album 4 and a half stars, writing: “Pruned to a relatively tight 44-and-a-half minutes, ‘Carrie & Lowell’ – with the couple pictured on the sleeve – is one of Sufjan’s most fat-free and consistently stunning records, but also his darkest. There are no brass fanfares like 2006’s ‘Adlai Stevenson’ or fancy-dress-party tunes like 2005’s ‘Chicago’. This is downbeat and delicate alt-folk drenched, very sweetly, in blood, grief and desolation.”

Stevens’ most recent album was 2023’s ‘Javelin’.