Sufjan Steven's seventh studio album, Carrie & Lowell, was released in 2015. It was a quiet, indie-folk album with very autobiographical lyrics written by Stevens as a way of dealing with the death of his mother, Carrie. Lowell is Stevens' stepfather. The writing and recording of songs dealing with memories of his mother, who suffered from mental illness and abandoned him when he was a year old, was a means of grieving for Stevens. Not as cathartic as he expected, the project actually caused him to feel worse. Now he has released a follow-up album consisting of outtakes, remixes and original demos from Carrie & Lowell. The instrumentation is fuller on many of the tracks, and the additional songs add more detail and emotion to Steven's very personal project.
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