“No Shade In The Shadow Of The Cross” is the first single from Carrie & Lowell, the new album from Sufjan Stevens available at the end of March. Lyrics posted below.

You can get the song on iTunes when you preorder the album, on Bandcamp, or when you preorder the record through Asthmatic Kitty Records.

PS: In concert with record stores around the world, we’ve set up headphone listening parties so you can hear Carrie & Lowell early. See those dates and locations here.

Justin Vernon (Bon Iver) and Aaron Dessner (The National) are curating a music festival in Vernon’s hometown of Eau Claire, WI. Sufjan is slated to play. Tickets are available here.

Says Justin Vernon, “That the barriers between the stage and the audience altered, and expression and experience put above all. We have put so much thought into who should collaborate at this festival, from musicians to actors, filmmakers to visual artists. We will all share and revel in this collision of artistic force while performing in the arms of our own Chippewa River Valley.”

We’re proud to announce that on March 31st (March 30th in the EU) we’ll be releasing Carrie & Lowell, a new Sufjan Stevens record.

THESE ARE AGGRESSIVE TIMES. Each morning we awaken to a psychic blitz of breaking news, social outrage, and millions of images and voices shrieking look at me and this onslaught does not cease until late at night when the last glowing screen fades to black. This world demands our attention with one hand and destroys it with the other. That such a noisy age can deliver an album as graceful and honest as Carrie & Lowell should reassure anyone losing faith these days. Let no one say philosophy is dead, for here is a 44-minute meditation on mortality, memory, and faith.

Each track in this collection of eleven songs begins with a fragile melody that gathers steam until it becomes nothing less than a modern hymn. Sufjan recounts the indignities of our world, of technological distraction and sad sex, of an age without either myth or miracle—and this time around, his voice carries the burden of wisdom. Si jeunesse savait, si vieillesse pouvait. If youth knew, if age could.

Our limited edition first pressing is in clear colored vinyl, which is available for preorder now. It’s also available in black vinyl, CD, and digital. The first single, “No Shade in the Shadow of the Cross,” arrives mid-February. You can be one of the first to hear it by preordering the album on iTunes or Bandcamp.

Thanks to Pitchfork who premiered the trailer today. We also put the trailer on a little website along with a write-up and pre-order links. Visit carrieandlowell.com for more information.

EDIT: We’re out of clear vinyl in our webshop and Bandcamp page, but black vinyl is still available. Here’s a list of retailers currently selling the clear vinyl:
EU:  VinylTap / Norman Records
US: Amoeba / Origami

City planning, outer space, and now the rodeo: at the end of January Sufjan Stevens will perform what has become an ongoing series of multimedia performances premiering at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and incorporating collaborations with stellar performers and video artists into new classical compositions by Stevens himself.

His live electronics, along with percussion and piano duo Yarn/Wire, will be accompanied at the premiere of ROUND-UP by a new film shot Aaron and Alex Craig, at the BAM Harvey Theater from Jan. 20-25.

Previously, Sufjan Stevens collaborated with Bryce Dessner and Nico Muhly to compose Planetarium, a set of hymns to our solar system, for a BAM premiere in 2013, and at 2007’s BAM Next Wave Festival he unveiled The BQE, a symphonic poem about the Brooklyn–Queens Expressway. ROUND-UP, through the Craig Brothers’ slow-motion footage, is a chamber piece that takes the audience to the 2013 Pendleton Round-Up in Pendleton, Oregon to explore the roping, riding, and ritual of the rodeo.

Buy tickets here.

A new trailer is available for viewing now. See it above or here.

Indiewire premiered the trailer and interviewed Sufjan and the Craig Brothers. Said Sufjan on the topic of the composition and film: “Round-ups are steeped in a lifestyle of cattle ranchers, and they take place on these grounds — it’s a way of life that still exists. The film is part of a much bigger argument about the domestication of plants and animals and man’s relationship to the earth. It’s an existential issue that I think is crucial to have conversation about: man in modern society.”