• Sufjan Stevens – The Greatest Gift Mixtape

    The release of Sufjan Stevens’ last album proper, 2015’s Carrie & Lowell, proved him to be an artist still very much at the top of his game. A decade on from the breakthrough of Illinois, the album saw him swap that record’s lavish arrangements, and follow up The Age of Adz’s oddball electronics, for a return to the hushed folk and introspection found on 2004’s Seven Swans, this time themed around his parents in the wake of his mother’s passing. The album’s tracklisting seemed so perfectly formed – he tended to play all eleven tracks at subsequent live shows, as…