Description
The Greatest Gift is a mixtape of outtakes, remixes and demos from Sufjans 2015 album Carrie & Lowell. This collection serves as a companion piece to the Carrie & Lowell Live album (and as an expansion to the original album). In the same way the live show featured re-interpretations of the songs from Carrie & Lowell, the mixtape unveils new remixes by several longstanding collaborators including Roberto C. Lange (aka Helado Negro), Thomas Bartlett (aka Doveman) and James McAlister (aka 900X). The album also features Sufjans own remix of Drawn To The Blood.
The Greatest Gift features four previously unreleased new songs, official outtakes from Carrie & Lowell (they were recorded at the same time as the album). These include Wallowa Lake Monster, The Hidden River Of My Life, City Of Roses and The Greatest Gift. This new material, in its investigation of love, life, death, God and the beautiful state of Oregon, serves as a contemplative companion to the original album.
LP pressed on translucent yellow vinyl with digital download code.
Carrie & Lowell Live is an audio and visual document of Sufjans November 9, 2015 performance at North Charleston Performing Arts Center in South Carolina.
The translucent blue LP release includes Blue Bucket Of Gold on one side, a cover of Drakes Hotline Bling featuring Gallant on the second side and a digital download code for the full 16-track set from his Carrie & Lowell live show.
The show, which was designed by Marc Janowitz, incorporated an expansive lighting display and cathedral-like LED columns featuring home videos shot by Sufjans maternal grandfather, Nick Marabeas. Much of this vintage footage highlights family birthdays, graduations and weddings of Carrie and her siblings from the late 1940s through the early 1970s, lending the performances the emotional arc of a memorial, celebrating Carries life and meditating on her death with a sweeping transcendence that gave testament to Sufjans central thesis of mourning: that in spite of death, we must go on living in fullness and joy.
Sufjan Stevens is one of the most prolific and absolutely gifted American songwriters of the 21st Century. NPR
Stevens remains at the height of his powers capable of work as individual, compassionate and powerful as any American composer working today. The Washington Post
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