Lowell Brams was married to Sufjan Stevens’ mother, Carrie, for five years in the early 1980s. She dealt with depression, schizophrenia, and alcoholism throughout her life, and initially abandoned Stevens’ family when he was one. But after Lowell entered the picture, Carrie reconnected with her kids, and he seemed to provide Stevens and his siblings with the most stable times of their childhood, especially three summers they spent together with he and Carrie in Eugene, Oregon. Inside Carrie & Lowell, which features lyrics steeped in imagery from Eugene, there’s a photo of Carrie crocheting. You see the reflection of Lowell in a mirror, holding a camera: He has this gentle, observant, slightly out of the frame presence on the record, too.

In my review of Carrie & Lowell, I reflected on another photo in the liner notes depicting a young Sufjan eating a banana, and noted that Carrie’s eyes aren’t on him: "She's not looking at him, but she's there...It's a haunting feeling that this little kid, years later, would create a masterpiece so knowing about suffering, sadness, death, and loneliness." Shortly after its publication, I received a note from Brams, who wanted to make sure I knew that Carrie’s eyes weren’t on her son “because there were three other kids under 10 years old at the table. Quite a handful." I found it touching that, years after Carrie’s death, and the end of his marriage to her, he wanted to make sure I knew she wasn’t a bad person.

-=-=-=-As a testament to his ongoing relationship with his stepson, Brams co-founded Asthmatic Kitty in 1998, and the two have recorded electronic music together, like on 2009’s Music for Insomnia. As the press blurb for that release reads, "Lowell Brams was raised in West Alexandria and Dayton, Ohio. He met Sufjan Stevens in Detroit, Michigan, in 1976, but Sufjan was eleven months old and doesn’t remember it. After Lowell and Sufjan’s mother married, they re-met in 1980 in Eugene, Oregon, have been friends since then."

Brams answered the phone at Asthmatic Kitty’s Wyoming office when I called to talk to him about Carrie & Lowell last month.

Pitchfork: Has hearing the album maybe brought any memories back?

Lowell Brams: No, I don't think I've forgotten that much about the summers he and his siblings stayed with us. Those are very vivid memories and the best memories from a marriage that ultimately didn't work out. So there wasn't anything I had forgotten. [On the album] he mentions being left in a video store, that I never heard about before, and I'm pretty certain it did not happen when they were visiting us. Because I would have heard about it, but I guess it happened somewhere else. Maybe in Detroit [where Stevens grew up]. I don't know.

Pitchfork: Did Sufjan talk to you about the album as he was working on it? Was it something you were aware was happening and have you talked about it since?

LB: We, no we didn't talk about it when he was working on it. I didn't really know what he was working on as far as his next album. But then I went to New York, and I think that's when we were finishing up another electronic noise album that we had been working on off and on for about five years. He told me about the album, and his idea of you know using the title and the photograph. And asked me if it was okay with me. And I said yes it was. And, you know, it’s not something I really had to think about too much. I understood immediately that here was something, there was going to be a little light shined on part of my life that was private, and just shared with a few people including him and his siblings and some other relatives of his mother's, and that it was his creative choice. I've learned if I'm questioning his creative choices, it later turns out I was wrong. I learned that some time ago, so, you know, I thought, Okay. And we talked about the album, but more in terms just in how it came about. He's said in interviews that the person listed as the co-producer, Thomas Bartlett, sort of came up with the idea after hearing a lot of material that Sufjan had recorded. So we've talked about that. But as far as what the songs are about, to me, it's kind of self-explanatory.