There was a period when Sufjan Stevens sought to camouflage the emotional intimacy of his songs with some Flaming Lips-style live razzmatazz – cheerleader costumes, stage gimmicks and an excess of eye-searing DayGlo. But his seventh album Carrie and Lowell is more likely to leave marks on your heart than the inside of your eyelids. It’s a stripped-to-the-bone audit of love, loss and regret, triggered by the 2012 death of Stevens’s mother, a volatile free spirit with a glancing but lasting impact on his life.
At this gig, staged as part of the Edinburgh international festival, there is a distinct absence of fluorescence. Instead, Stevens and his multi-tasking four-piece band – with the occasional help of the National’s Bryce Dessner – glide with undertaker care among a lo-fi scatter of assorted instruments and recreate the entirety of Carrie and Lowell in a slightly reshuffled sequence. Sparse on record, the songs as they are presented here expand in both variation and intensity. Fourth of July, a track that usually dwindles with a whispered “we’re all going to die” refrain, builds to such a massive, thundering peak it could function as the climax for almost any other show.
With stark lighting and zero smalltalk to break the spell, these vivid remembrances and confessionals accrue an almost overwhelming power. It might sound daft to suggest a silhouetted roadie passing Stevens a mandolin could seem like a gesture freighted with doomy, dramatic portent, but such is the poise and sustained solemnity of the performance. It’s 90 minutes of high-wire intensity, and when Blue Bucket of Gold’s final electronic convulsions fade away, it feels like everyone in this grand old theatre releases a communal breath they weren’t even aware they were holding.
When Stevens returns, he’s sporting a battered baseball cap, perhaps a signifier of a rather more relaxed approach. He dips into a suite of older songs that, if not necessarily cheerier – it includes his celebrated murder ballad John Wayne Gacy, Jr – at least creates a more gregarious atmosphere. He even seems to channel the ragged spirit of the Edinburgh fringe, telling a tall tale about a goat unicorn while tuning his banjo and repeatedly giggling, stopping and restarting the final furlong of The Dress Looks Nice on You. “I feel very loved, and love you very much,” he confesses. It’s a heartwarming coda to a truly spectacular gig.
- At Apollo, Manchester, 31 August (box office: 0844-477 7677) , and Royal Festival Hall, London, 2-3 September (020-7960 4200), then touring.
