Label: Asthmatic Kitty
Released: Jul 5, 2005 |
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The first word that popped into my head upon hearing “Flint” off of Sufjan Steven’s Michigan is meek. Sufjan always comes across as being a wounded dove in a battlefield, if that dove is a broken hearted union worker, and the battlefield was a recently downsized auto yard. On Michigan Sufjan wrote some really excellent songs on very depressing situations, but through all projected an image of great hope. Sufjan’s voice may have been meek, but his message was bold, and carried a much heavier weight
On Illinois Sufjan sets out to make an even larger musical statement with full on orchestration and choirs that replace the Stereolab-esque loops on previous albums. Some tracks instrumentation sound as if they were pulled straight from those Disney nature movies I used to watch in grade school. You basically hear the full on maturation of the new sound, in “Casimir Pulaski Day”, starts as an understated acoustic ballad, and slowly rises into one of the best folk rock songs of the day, take that Bright Eyes. The lyrics of Casimir rely mostly on the blind faith of days gone by, falling in love with the terminally ill, and feeling guilty about the complications you might have caused, but the banjo plugs along accompanied by an upbeat melody you never really notice the weight behind it all, finally the song crashes and ends with a minor chord. Other tracks I appreciated greatly included, John Wayne Gacy Jr., Chicago, and They are Night Zombies!!, a track in which I am totally pulling for Kanye West to sample.
There is very little to complain about with Sufjan’s achievement here, but the album (and tracklist) is very long, filled with interludes and instrumentals, ranging from five seconds to over 3 minutes, make this album very hard to digest in one or even two commutes from the office. But Overall I would have to say Illinois is a great album, in my mind, in my mind.
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