10 Greatest Live Rock Albums Since 2010

After years of gradually building bombasticness, Sufjan Stevens returned to his folksy roots on 2015’s Carrie & Lowell, the restrained, personal collection becoming his best album by far. Played at home, it’s a beautiful, often heartbreaking work, but would it translate live?

Stevens swerved just the right amount on his supporting tour. While the show didn’t revert to the scale of his last album (in which he’d pack the stage with players and don angel wings), he plumps up the primarily solo acoustic sound of the album where appropriate, and keeps thing simple elsewhere.

The especially gutting “No Shade In The Shadow Of The Cross” is played mostly straight - just guitar and fragile vocals - and is all the more touching for the liveness of it all. “John My Beloved”, meanwhile, is given a fresh lick of paint in the way of droning synths, which highlights the circular, music box qualities of the chord sequence.

Stevens chucks in a few Age Of Adz tracks into the mix, but it’s the Carrie & Lowell material that really sings - it’s an arena recording, but the song and the performance draws the audience in impossibly close.