“As I abide in peace, so will my delight increase.”
Most of my warm feelings toward The Greatest Gift are basically residual affections for Carrie & Lowell, Sufjan Stevens’ austere and hyper-emotional exploration of grief in the wake of his mother’s death. More than half of the tracks on this “mixtape” are alternative versions or demos of songs from the album and the rest are pleasant additions to Stevens’ catalog that were understandably cut because their whimsy and pep don’t match the downbeat tone of the final selections. While remixes by Helado Negro (‘Death with Dignity’, ‘All of Me Wants All of You’) reveal the sparse, simple-sounding songs of Carrie & Lowell could have easily evolved into electro-folk extravaganzas á la The Age of Adz, few of the alternative versions actually improve on the originals. I quite like ‘Drawn to the Blood (Fingerpicking Remix)’ but would not argue that it surpasses the album version, nor would I go to bat against anyone who treasures the album to such a degree that they consider this reimagining to be nigh sacreligious. The iPhone demos are just that, illuminating but inessential, showcasing Stevens natural songwriting abilities but not his intricate production skills and his ability to elegantly pivot from delicate acoustic arrangements to mind-expanding grandiosity which is in evidence on the b-sides, where the committed fan will likely spend the most time. Both ‘Wallowa Lake Monster’ and ‘The Hidden River of My Life’ might have fit on the album, the former, with its fluttery fingerpicking and angelic choruses, introducing a third element in Stevens’ “cosmic fable” alongside Greek myths and bible characters (his mother becomes the Leviathan and a dragon, suggesting it may have been one of the first tracks written for Carrie & Lowell, before it became so transparently autobiographical; further suggesting that the album could have doubled as another “state” album for Oregon—imagine: Native American tribes, The Oregon Trail, Crater Lake, Lewis and Clark, Linus Pauling, Tonya Harding), while the latter is a depressive banjo-led foot-stomper leading into a droning ambient passage. The title track, a sub-2-minute little folk poem about Christian virtues, and the delightful ‘City of Roses’, are both wonderful additions to the Sufjan oeuvre, but neither would have fit on the mournful Carrie & Lowell.
Favorite Tracks: Wallowa Lake Monster; Drawn to the Blood (Fingerpicking Remix); The Greatest Gift; The Hidden River of My Life.