Sufjan Stevens - Illinois - Let's get some things straight here: Sufjan Stevens in not some magical figure who can reach the innermost feelings of anybody and everybody. He's not making me feel a whole lot of sympathy for John Wayne Gacy. He's not doing an album for every state as an attempt to reach the heart and soul of every single American (in my eyes it's more of a system of organizing his ridiculously prolific songwriting), and quality control is still lacking just a tad (if you're releasing an album with 22 songs that's almost 80 minutes long, and your band is not the Beatles, you probably need to trim some fat somewhere). But for such a looooooong and winding album, there's a remarkable amount of fantastic material.
I'm not ready to call Stevens the premier songwriter of his generation, but as a polyphonic pop maestro, he has few, if any, rivals. Songs like "Come On! Feel the Illinoise!" and "The Predatory Wasp of the Palisades is Out to Get Us!" are positively bursting with an ecstatic energy and unique way of winding divinely gorgeous melodies around irregular rhythms and dense backdrops. Same goes for "Jacksonville," "Chicago," and "The Tallest Man, the Broadest Shoulders." The first time I put on Illinois, I knew I was in for a treat as soon as I heard the second track, "The Black Hawk War" (I'm foregoing the song's subtitle, which takes about as long to write as the song does to listen to). What sort of indie rocker has the audacity to write an enormous fanfare, complete with blasting horns, to announce his own entrance? Only Sufjan Stevens.
Stevens has an amazing ability to combine huge, bombastic arrangements with ambitious, multi-part songs, often topping 6 minutes or more in length, and somehow keeping them completely grounded and unpretentious, and that might be his greatest strength. No matter how sprawling and epic, Stevens' songs glow with a warmth and humanity that often feels paradoxical and always feels like a triumph of the human spirit. Am I being hyperbolic? Maybe, but he deserves it. This would easily be #1 with a few less meandering piano interludes, and if his next album is as much an improvement over Illinois as Illinois is over Greetings From Michigan (a terrific record itself), that one will have no problem making #1, either, and maybe #1 of the decade, or more (there's some hyperbole for you).
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"...but as a polyphonic pop maestro, he has few, if any, rivals." I couldn't describe him any better than this. Listening to Sufjan now is such an interesting experience for me, I get this weird detached feeling like I'm listening to something generally likeable ... as in pleasant muzak in a department store. But when I stop and think, I say, "WOW! THIS SUFJAN IS REALLY GREAT!" And I think it's because he has numbed me with his ridiculous all-over-the-map-edness (I mean his variety of styles, not just the fact that he's literally all over the map with the titles of these albums and songs) Anyway, I would also place Sufjan at #2 .... I haven't quite figured out my number one yet. I hope some pretty ridiculous outrageousness comes out this year.
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