Sufjan Stevens - Illinoise (2005)

Simply in its ambition and scope, Illinoise is quite an achievement. Sufjan Stevens, a relatively new player in the folk/pop genre, has set out to make 50 albums, each dedicated to one of the 50 continental United States. This album, following the first installment of Michigan, is the second of the series that could see Stevens’ recording albums for a very, very long time to come.Judging by the quality of this effort, this could only be a good thing. Even if you don’t particularly like his music, you have to respect Stevens’ talent. The album contains an extensive twenty-two tracks, all written and arranged by Stevens, with many featuring choral and orchestral parts. The subject matter ranges from Al Capone to Superman (The Man of Metropolis Steals Our Hearts), from the Civil War and Abraham Lincoln, to The Seer’s Tower. Perhaps the strangest, and most oddly touching moment of the album, comes in the form of the song John Wayne Gacy, Jr., about the serial killer who raped, murdered and buried the bodies of more than thirty men under his house, in the Chicago area during the 1970s. Grim subject matter, indeed, however Stevens manages to paint his subject in a light that suggests he was indeed troubled, but perhaps only a little more than the average person. Towards the end of the song, Stevens sings “And in my best behaviour / I am really just like him / Look beneath the floorboards / For the secrets I have hid.” It may take you a while to get your head around this, and many of the other songs on “Illinoise,” such is the complexity of the songs that Stevens creates. I have had the album for quite some time now, and continue to find something new with each listen. I must admit, though, that it is one album that I rarely, if ever, listen to from start to finish. Perhaps, simply because of the sheer magnitude of it, it is an album that is more easily digestible in smaller doses, rather than as a whole.

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