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Sufjan Stevens brings his mortality music to the Majestic, and it's more stunner than bummer

We've listened to nothing rawer this year than Sufjan Stevens' recently released seventh album, Carrie & Lowell. It's an 11-song rumination on the art-folk star's grief over the loss of his mother, who had more than her share of turmoil before passing in 2012.

While the songs on the new LP sound beautifully warm — Stevens excels at acoustic picking and whisper-soft vocals — their lyrics punch you in the gut, never glossing over the ugliness of grieving or lingering thoughts of mortality.

It's fair to assume that fans who nearly filled downtown Dallas' Majestic Theatre on Sunday night knew they weren't coming to party. They expected a reflective and reverent live show, having taken in the emotional heft of Carrie & Lowell beforehand and then deciding to hear it live on Mother's Day, of all days.

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Stage set, the curtain rose to reveal Stevens and his four-piece band in shadows, amber lights and smoke. After an extended prelude that worked to effectively hush the house, they opened with the new album's first track, "Death With Dignity," whose lyrics find Stevens attempting to conjure up the strength to cope. We glanced around and saw not a single camera phone in the air, and at the end of the song there was no applause. The whole theatre seemed to be in some sort of trance.

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They didn't make a sound until the end of the second song, "Should Have Known Better," which conveys regret about not grieving properly. Stevens and his players (including Dawn Landes, who'd earlier pinch-hit as a makeshift opening act after Moses Sumney missed his flight) eventually worked their way through all of the songs from the new album. The deep sadness of "The Only Thing," the search for distractions in "All of Me Wants All of You," the burned-in childhood imagery of "Eugene" — the crowd responded more appreciatively with each selection.

The most powerful new tune performed, hands down, was "Fourth of July," which segues from a vivid death scene into mortality's hard fact. The song ended with a marching beat, the repeating phrase "we're all gonna die," and roaming spotlights pointed toward the audience. Not a subtle message in the least.

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Would you believe that Stevens didn't say a word to the fans until after the eleventh song of the set? Yet, when he finally spoke, he did so at length.

Stevens said that as a child after the loss of his grandmother, he was presented with The Tibetan Book of the Dead and a volume of Sylvia Plath's poems. He also worked in the story of the unceremonious offing of his pet albino rat, Mr. Bossypants. Quips like that brought hearty laughs and much needed moments of levity before Stevens began to go deeper into his thoughts about how we should see loss and frame it in our own experience.

After he finished what he called his "lecture for the evening," Stevens and crew moved back into a last movement of music. Songs from the 2004 EP Seven Swans and 2010's The Age of Adz retained the mood previously set by the Carrie & Lowell material. And then came an encore packed with material from Illinois, the 2005 concept album for which Stevens is best known and most loved.

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Nice of the guy to play his "hits" at the end, but he'd already left a strong enough impression with or without them. Sunday's production exceeded most of what concert crowds experience these days in regards to thoughtfulness and commitment to theme.

We feel like we're just now coming out of that trance.