Claude says:Stevens grew up in Detroit and later Alanson, Michigan, and his debut album A Sun Came was released in 2000 on Asthmatic Kitty, the label he co-founded with his stepfather. The album featured banjo, oboe, place-names, and Great Lakes geography that would define his early work. You gave it a handful of spins in late 2008 and early 2009, but it never became a fixture — just a brief encounter with the blueprint before Illinois took over.