Whether he’s writing orchestral indie-rock epics about American expansion (“Come on, feel the Illinoise!”) or intimate folk ballads about spiritual liberation (“To Be Alone with You”), Sufjan Stevens is a frequently flamboyant storyteller—wringing emotional clarity from unpredictable sounds and subject matter. But he takes a more linear approach on his seventh LP, Carrie & Lowell, channeling the grief from his mother’s death into 11 heart-wrenching acoustic meditations. The album—named after Stevens’ late mom and his label/partner’s stepfather—was largely recorded in the singer-songwriter’s Brooklyn office studio. The arrangements are suitably sparse with guitar and banjo plucks, an occasional piano chord, the distant hum of an air conditioner—none of the fluttering woodwinds or electronic avalanches that defined 2010’s The Age of Adz. “What is that song you sing for the dead?” Stevens asks on opener “Death With Dignity,” his boyish tenor backed by fingerpicked chords and encouraging choral voices. He spends 44 minutes attempting to answer that question—from the crescendoing “Should Have Known Better” to the faded photograph reverie “Eugene.” The catharsis is staggering.