Sufjan Stevens announces new album Carrie & Lowell

Named after his mother and stepfather, this latest link in Stevens' lengthy chain will see him reportedly dive back into his folk roots. On his new website there's a lengthy blog post, which you can read a snippet of below:

"In "Carrie and Lowell," Sufjan Stevens is a child again or, more specifically, the child character in the family of man drama that often but not always centers on the story of love given, or love forsaken, but isn't that the same thing to the poet? That the love Stevens sings about having left or given or been born to--thank you, Carrie--is a perceptible wound not only on the singer's throat, but his sleeve: he wears love's incomprehensibility, and the deep incomprehensibility of being a son, like a backing vocal on "Carrie and Lowell," which is also filled with colors, hearts, trees, conclusions, and beginnings, all adding up to the kind of intimacy that caught my eye the morning I sat in the diner waiting for the sun to get stronger as I saw intimacy pass by while going about it's business, like something sung and felt by Sufjan Stevens on his new beautiful solitary and rich record filled with faith and disbelief and the resurrection of trust and dreams."

The record has been created alongside Casey Foubert, Laura Veirs, Nedelle Torrisi, Sean Carey, Ben Lester and Thomas Bartlett and mixed by Stevens, Bartlett and Pat Dillet.

Carrie & Lowell will be released 30 March via Stevens' own Asthmatic Kitty label.

For more information - including pre-orders - head here.

You can find the tracklist below, after the album's trailer.

Tracklist

1. Death With Dignity (3:59)
2. Should Have Known Better (5:07)
3. All Of Me Wants All Of You (3:41)
4. Drawn to the Blood (3:18)
5. Eugene (2:26)
6. Fourth of July (4:39)
7. The Only Thing (4:44)
8. Carrie & Lowell (3:14)
9. John My Beloved (5:04)
10. No Shade in the Shadow of The Cross (2:40)
11. Blue Bucket of Gold (4:43)