Tracks:
1. Concerning The UFO Sighting Near Highland, Illinois
2. The Black Hawk War, or, How to Demolish an Entire Civilization and Still Feel Good About Yourself in the Morning, or, We Apologize for the Inconvenience but You're Going to Have to Leave Now, or, 'I Have Fought the Big Knives and Will Continue to Fight Them Until They Are Off Our Lands!
3. Come On! Feel the Illinoise!
4. John Wayne Gacy, Jr.
5. Jacksonville
6. A Short Reprise For Mary Todd, Who Went Insane, But For Very Good Reasons
7. Decatur, Or, Round Of Applause For Your Stepmother!
8. One Last 'Whoo-Hoo!' for the Pullman
9. Chicago
10. Casimir Pulaski Day
11. To The Workers Of The Rock River Valley Region, I Have An Idea Concerning Your Predicament
12. The Man Of Metropolis Steals Our Hearts
13. Prairie Fire That Wanders About
14. A Conjunction Of Drones Simulating The Way In Which Sufjan Stevens Has An Existential Crisis In The Great Godfrey Maze
15. The Predatory Wasp Of The Palisades Is Out To Get Us!
16. They Are Night Zombies!! They Are Neighbors!! They Have Come Back From The Dead!! Ahhhh!
17. Let's Hear That String Part Again, Because I Don't Think They Heard It All the Way Out in Bushnell
18. In This Temple As In The Hearts Of Man For Whom He Saved The Earth
19. The Seer's Tower
20. The Tallest Man, The Broadest Shoulders: Part I: The Great Frontier/Part II: Come To Me Only With Playthings Now
21. Riffs And Variations On A Single Note For Jelly Roll, Earl Hines, Louis Armstrong, Baby Dodds, And The King Of Swing, To Name A Few
22. Out Of Egypt, Into The Great Laugh Of Mankind, And I Shake The Dirt From My Sandals As I Run
About album of the day: The BestEverAlbums.com album of the day is the album appearing most prominently in member charts in the previous 24 hours. If an album has previously been selected within a x day period, the next highest album is picked instead (and so on) to ensure a bit of variety.
The Black Hawk War, or, How to Demolish an Entire Civilization and Still Feel Good About Yourself in the Morning, or, We Apologize for the Inconvenience but You're Going to Have to Leave Now, or, 'I Have Fought the Big Knives and Will Continue to Fight Them Until They Are Off Our Lands!' is the longest track title on the whole site!
This album represents something of a milestone for me. Here's my review:
Thank God for changing tastes. With increasing frequency, I am discovering that a lot of the walls that had confined my musical taste for so long are thankfully crumbling. My previous encounter with Sufjan Stevens ended in disappointment in 2004 when I previewed the tracks from Seven Swans at a record store and walked away disappointed, unable to look past my aversion to folk. With all of the bombast that surrounded the Illinois album a year later, I never gave it the same chance at the time, and only picked it up on a whim last year after other mind-bending listens had proven that some of the most rewarding listens that I have occur when my guard is down. With that, I was able to appreciate Illinois for what it is: a truly inspired musical journey masquerading as an album, and certainly one of the most worthwhile releases to emerge from the 2000s.
The album plays like a musical that not only provides insight into the history of the state of Illinois, but captures the feeling of the Midwest across many generations. For his part, Sufjan proves to be an expert at injecting the listener into the stories within the songs, fabricating a sort of collective nostalgia that creates an emotional bond with the music. And so it is that I am right there with the people with wide-eyed wonder looking up at the UFO in the first track, mourning the death of a friend with Sufjan in Track 10, rejoicing in the unfettered freedom of the hundreds of miles of road (and life) that lie ahead in "Chicago" and helplessly agasp at the horror of the brutal killings committed by John Wayne Gacy, Jr. with a morbid fascination about the background depicted. This brings up another reason why Illinois has become a special album for me- it has challenged the way that I listen to music. Ever the statistician, I typically obsess over things like song titles and track lengths. However, the voyage that this album takes me on is so thoroughly rewarding and perfectly sequenced that I haven't bothered to learn the full titles of many of these songs, content to not dissect it for analysis as I typically do.
The music is as rich, dense and cinematic as is necessary to give the experience the weight that the material deserves. With a virtual symphony at his disposal, Sufjan dabbles in many different styles while singing with a genuinely sweet tone of innocence. And while I still have several barriers with regard to the acoustic folk and Americana, even in songs like "Jacksonville" and "Decatur", there are elements contained within that break down my resistance, whether it be beautiful melodies sung by background vocalists, intricate rhythms, sweeping string arrangements or the general radiance that beams throughout the whole affair. In truth, every song has its moments of unabashed beauty, like the moment when a majestic horn joins the joyfully marching stride of "Chicago", or the moment when no fewer than three separate melodies are sung simultaneously over the creeping electronic boogie of "Night Zombies", or the repeated climbing five-note shivers that sparkle through the final minutes of the moving "Predatory Wasp", or the wonderful resonance as the slowly ascending final segment of "The Tallest Man, The Greatest Shoulders" seems to act as the real curtain call for the album before the final two tracks serve as a peaceful epilogue. My favorite such passages occur within the same track, as "Come On! Feel the Illinoise!" opens with a jazzy Guaraldi-like dive into pure jubilation before some horns and woodwinds punctuate the song in the middle as it transitions to a truly magical coda complete with a repeated piano riff, dignified horns and dazzling strings taking turns tugging at my heart while Sufjan sings of becoming overcome with emotion, himself, with the repeated refrain "Are you writing from the heart?" providing the ultimate visceral jolt.
With Illinois, Sufjan Stevens created a remarkable album that has joined the elite ranks of a select few others that are capable of fulfilling and uplifting with each listen. Released in the midst of an ocean of material that is so painfully self-aware and affected (much of which I likewise adore), it feels both refreshing and vital. I hate to throw around a word like "important" to describe music, but Illinois fits the bill as well as any other album I can recall from the past 10 years. Surely, it has become an album that I have grown to treasure for both its contents and its impact on the way I listen to music.
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