There are moments during shows at the Fox Theater when the majesty of the space lends its cathedral-like weight to the performer on stage, elevating their music to the eternal plane of hymns. I remember a moment like that when Fleet Foxes frontman Robin Pecknold took a break from harmonizing during a 2011 show to take in the beauty of the place and tell the people of Oakland how lucky they were to have it. And minutes into his first number on Friday, Sufjan Stevens made it clear that he would be commanding that grand stage with his haunting whisper of a voice, and would make thorough, reverent use of that Deco temple to pay tribute to his past, in particular his stepfather and recently deceased mother, whose names became the title of his new album, Carrie & Lowell.

Stevens' Friday and Saturday shows at the Fox were both seated performances, as is necessary to take in the quietness of many of his songs. Throughout this tour Stevens has been performing the entirety of Carrie & Lowell, almost in the same track order of the album, with some of his older songs thrown in toward the end of the set, and in the encore. And the album is, truly, beautifully melodic and spare in the way of some of Stevens' earliest music. Speaking to Pitchfork earlier this year Stevens said the songwriting on this album was "something that was necessary for me to do in the wake of my mother’s death — to pursue a sense of peace and serenity in spite of suffering. It’s not really trying to say anything new, or prove anything, or innovate. It feels artless, which is a good thing. This is not my art project; this is my life."

The songs about his schizophrenic, alcoholic mother, whose presence in Stevens' life was inconsistent but who clearly looms large in his psyche, are the saddest for obvious reasons. He mentions being abandoned by her ("when I was three, three maybe four, she left us at that video store," he sings in "Should Have Known Better"), and calls her "tired old mare with the wind in your hair." Also, in the opening track of the album "Death With Dignity," he sings, "I forgive you, mother, I can hear you/ And I long to be near you."

Stevens only took a break to speak to the audience after performing most of these songs, including the devastating but lovely, "Fourth of July," in which the repeated refrain, sung in Stevens' soft falsetto, is "We're all gonna die." The song is almost comically depressing, but Stevens' sense of humor is woven enough through the lyrics of the songs that the weight of tragedy and loss doesn't feel as overwhelming as on, say, Bon Iver's For Emma. In "Eugene" he tells one of these funny stories that elicited laughs from the audience: "The man who taught me to swim, he couldn't quite say my first name / Like a Father he led community water on my head/ And he called me 'Subaru.'"

And in his spoken word break, in addition to waxing philosophical about life in general, he joked about the vintage Michigan t-shirt he'd purchased at an East Bay thrift store, saying "Now that I'm sweating I can kind of smell the B.O. of the person who owned this shirt before me."

At 39, Stevens seems more assured, and as he puts it, artless than ever before. He presents his music often with minimal orchestration, him alone on the piano, guitar, banjo, or ukulele, slipping into falsetto and barely ever varying the volume of his voice, and always holding the audience's quiet attention like a shaman.

The main set ended with a rapturous crescendo from the entire band to close out what is the final track on Carrie & Lowell, "Blue Bucket of Gold." Following that, you could hear the audience quietly singing along and breathing heavy sighs of thanks as he performed a quartet of familiar tracks from his earlier albums as an encore. He sang, "Concerning the UFO Sighting Near Highland, Illinois ," followed by "Casimir Pulaski Day," "The Predatory Wasp of the Palisades Is Out to Get Us!" and the gorgeously anthemic "Chicago."

Having come through tragedy with him and out the other side, the gratitude was palpable in the room as devoted Sufjan fans sang happily along "I was in love with the place, in my mind in my mind" and "all things go, all things go." The night felt by then, as too few live music experiences do, transcendent and rare.