There are some people who make you think “Gee, I’d like to be friends with them, they seem like really interesting friends to have…” Then in the next breath you think “Actually, I’m kind of glad they’re not my friends, they seem a little too interesting, like maybe they're in a cult or really rich or something…” No?
C’mon, you know what I’m talking about. There’s a group of decent looking – okay, quite attractive - people in casually hip urban fashions sitting around a table drinking chai. "I've never tried chai, I wonder if it's sweet?" you think to yourself. Their eyes sparkle with zeal as they talk, using their hands and pointing at things you can’t see but which seem so very real. There are no loud guffaws and no awkward silences; no one seems to feel left out. .
You think to yourself “my friends and I don’t sit and talk like that, not about ideas, not about history… celebrity divorces maybe, but not Frank Lloyd Wright.” And you don’t. “That looks nice, I’d like to be part of a group like that.” You think. “Maybe I’d like to be part of that group…” Wouldn’t that be great, to sip chai and talk about big ideas and the world and neat stuff like that... it would be like living in a sitcom!
Then again, that could be a lot of work. There’s probably a defacto reading list and a ton of inside jokes. You’ll spend a small fortune trying to figure out what they listen to, what they wear. You’ll probably need to learn a second language. Plus in a group like this there are bound to be some weird dynamics lingering below the surface. You know someone hooked up with the guy in the cap, the one who looks like Enrique Iglesias and Wilmer Valderrama’s long lost half brother. Maybe she did – or maybe he did. Maybe both. Who are you to judge.
These folks are working in broad strokes on a huge canvas. The rest of us prefer Polaroids and Post-it notes. I mean really, can you believe that guy - the one in the cap – he’s recording an album of songs for each of the fifty states? And you can barely keep up your collection of new quarters. By the way, have you seen Oregon? Bor-ing.
However fascinating and brilliant these people are they are not accepting applications. When the time is right they will come to you.
But I digress.
I love Sufjan Stevens and I love this album. I love that he really does plan to record one for each of our fine states. I love that this is only his second installment in the magnum opus-to-be since “Michigan” arrived in 2003, that at this rate we’ll see “Idaho” sometime around 2104, and that he can still come up with enough material for the laudable “Seven Swans” in the midst his US civics project. I’ll still love it even if half of his fifty states albums are EPs – what can you say about Arkansas in twenty songs that you can’t cover in eight? I love the ambitious young Mr. Stevens like a weird relative I never see and won’t go out of my way to call. Maybe it’s just easier to appreciate him from afar. Actual conversations are always a little weird and definitely tiring. It takes energy to engage so much sincerity, such big ideas. Plus there’s all the born again Jesus stuff.
Speaking of Jesus, the album starts with a song about UFOs. Heavenly lights, angelic visitations and unexplained phenomena have always made equally good fodder for pop songs and bible stories. It’s a gentle and gently weird opening number, but on an album that boasts nearly two-dozen tracks Suf-J can easily afford a proper welcome mat - one that says “This is not your chamber of commerce approved tribute to the Land of Lincoln, but it’s interesting so come on in.”
Generally speaking the album balances the paradoxical ambitions at work in the greater project. On one hand Suf-J (I’m going to keep using that until it sticks) expands his sound to celebrate the ubiquity of an entire state, particularly one containing America’s Second City and a great lake, though there is no overt mention of that lake (Lake Michigan, perhaps glossed over to avoid confusion with his previous state-centric offering “Greetings from Michigan”). On the other hand he is presenting what seems like a collection of significant and specific personal experiences informed by and located in a place. The grand scope and balanced sensitivity is reflected in the album’s collection of poetic song titles where “A Short Reprise for Mary Todd, Who Went Insane, But for Very Good Reasons,” a medium-length label by Suf-J’s standards, belies an empathy and respect for the fragile human nature of disappearing players in a vast historical play.
Upbeat songs like “Come On! Feel The Illinoise!,” “Chicago,” and “The Man Of Metropolis…” play as if scoring a cheeky video montage of Stevens and friends cavorting around town, mugging for pictures in all the places you’ve ever recognized as Illinois-ey. Famous natives are casually name-checked but not belabored (Carl Sandberg, Frank Lloyd Wright, Abe Lincoln). Stevens wisely spends more time on the stories you don’t need an entire wing of the library to tell; those touching and occasionally odd tales that stick in your mind only to be dislodged by some seemingly unrelated tidbit when you least expect it. From the aching honesty of a moment captured and somewhat misleadingly titled “The Predatory Wasp Of The Palisades Is Out To Get Us!” to the stark and lingering “John Wayne Gacy, Jr.” the abstract and incomprehensible are humanized without removing the gory stingers.
While there are plenty of great moments to relish the album sounds best in its entirety – a whole greater than the sum of its considerable and many parts - an unusual feat for what could easily have been a throwaway pop-concept piece in a series of likeably similar efforts. Sufjan Stevens’ musical postcard from Illinois plays like a concise autobiography of a long trip in a rented van, maybe while listening to The Who's "Tommy" or Disney World’s “It's a Small World” attraction. Like any good road trip, songs match celebration with introspection, leaving behind memorable images and revealing more about the passengers than the passing scenery. And isn’t that the point? The ebb and flow of the songs, their wit, whimsy, and sullen charm, make the album good. The gentle tide of emotions shared while listening, its ability to linger and inspire reflection, makes it something greater than a collection of songs on a theme, it makes this a great album.
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