Come on feel the Illinoise – Sufjan Stevens [Album]

I place this among my favourite albums of all time, and anyone with a genuine interest in contemporary music would be well advised to investigate it. This is not just my opinion, it scored 90 on Metacritic. It’s really dense in content and almost impossible to single out particular tracks. Over time I’ve come to the conclusion that if you don’t have 74 minutes available then it’s not worth listening at all, because it’s that outdated and much disliked thing, a concept album. But possibly The Definitive One, because from start to end it is an absolutely astonishing thing. I challenge you to make a space for it in your life. Oh, and the record label? Asthmatic Kitty. Now I have your attention.

Sufjan Stevens (‘a man treading a thin line between bravery and mental illness’, Jesus Chigley, Drowned in Sound) embarked on a predictably unfeasible project in 2003 which was to produce an album about each one of the 50 US states. Greetings from Michigan, his home state, was the first, and then abruptly after Illinoise, the second, in 2005, he admitted it was a joke. I think if you’re already suspicious, some of the track names will disabuse you of the idea that it’s all a bit earnest, for example: To the Workers of the Rock River Valley Region, I Have an Idea Concerning Your Predicament, and It Involves Tube Socks, a Paper Airplane, and Twenty-Two Able-Bodied Men. There are stranger ones, including the nevertheless utterly gorgeous The Predatory Wasp Of The Palisades Is Out To Get Us! At this point you can undoubtedly make the argument that concept albums are being royally sent up.

Sufjan Stevens is one of the major singer/songwriters of the 21st century so far, and lyrically there is a massive breadth to his writing. I’ve had this album for nearly 20 years and yet I feel I have barely scratched the surface of it; I invariably focus on the instruments and the tunes and miss out on the lyrics which are easily overlooked. But some you can’t ignore; this about a friend who died:

On the floor at the great divide
With my shirt tucked in and my shoes untied
I am crying in the bathroom

In the morning when you finally go
And the nurse runs in with her head hung low
And the cardinal hits the window

In the morning in the winter shade
On the first of March, on the holiday
I thought I saw you breathing

All the glory that the Lord has made
And the complications when I see His face
In the morning in the window

All the glory when He took our place
But He took my shoulders and He shook my face
And He takes and He takes and He takes

Casimir Pulaski Day

Stevens’s songs often contain religious undertones that only strengthen the message, without becoming consumed with biblical references. Sufjan told The Atlantic that the correlation between his faith and his music exist because he believes faith does not influence us, rather it lives within us: “This absolves me from ever making the embarrassing effort to gratify God by imposing ‘religious’ content on anything I do”. But where to go with this review? There is so much to love. And questions, such as had he ever heard of Slade, or was the title just a coincidence? And the lovely playfulness of it all, along with an extraordinary musical imagination and directly confrontational content. “Stevens has a remarkable habit of being rousing and distressing at the same time” Amanda Petrusich, Pitchfork.

So I’m going to fall back on snatches and reactions. Or we could be here all day.

The creak of a piano at the very first second of the first track, and the appealingly vulnerable quality of the voice. The slightly pompous nature of track 2, The Black Hawk War, but then the emotional release of the title track, not a second of which isn’t full of business and intrigue, but it’s so listenable. This is true of the whole album, but you do have to properly listen. Leave off that phone. I won’t say it again.

John Wayne Gacy Jr, the story of a serial killer, in horrific detail, but clothed in a completely lovely, sad and disarming tune, and the final admission:

And in my best behaviour
I am really just like him
Look beneath the floorboards
For the secrets I have hid.

And his breath, and the delicate piano at the close. The bubbly Decatur (the title of which is rhymed with ‘alligator’, ‘aviator’, ‘congratulate her’ and ’emancipator’. But the track order draws you on and so don’t skip Chicago – oh no, let’s go there, in a van, with a friend!! All things go to recreate us!!! Longing for a road trip….

And Casimir Pulaski Day, if you insist on a standout, is one of them:

All the glory that the Lord has made
And the complications you could do without
When I kissed you on the mouth

The Man of Metropolis Steals our Hearts – a rock band; a gentle interlude; choirs; a rock band and choirs; a crazed guitar solo; and always the words, the words. They Are Night Zombies!! with a funky bass intro and Tamla Motown strings. The Tallest Man, The Broadest Shoulders, Illinois itself encapsulated. And finally the exquisite Out of Egypt, into the Great Laugh of Mankind, And I Shake the Dirt from my Sandals as I Run, with a hypnotic repeated chord, ending on a single note from the same creaking piano. Go listen, there’s a lot more to find.