Carrie & Lowell

Carrie & Lowell is named for his mother and stepfather, and was made after Carrie's death in 2012. Stevens recorded sketches in several studios and on an iPhone in an Oregon hotel room; Thomas Bartlett, he said, made sense of it all and called him out on his nonsense. He described the year as one of real darkness, and said he felt as if his mother's ghost were inhabiting him. The songs are mostly voice and guitar, with Oregon place names everywhere; he once considered calling it Oregon.

It went to ten in America and six in Britain, nearly half its early American sales on vinyl, and Pitchfork called it his best. Video games and This Is Us spread it further. On its tenth anniversary in 2025 he called it painful and humiliating, evidence of creative failure from his own vantage, and told NPR that grieving never ends; the music, he said, belongs to the listeners.