Illinoise, by Sufjan Stevens (Double LP on Rough Trade)

A Norman Records recommendation (28th November 2006)

Description:	Dbl G/fold LP on Rough Trade recs BACK IN!	UK ORDERS OVER £50 SHIP FREE!
Format:	Double LP
Label:	Rough Trade
Price:	£13.49
Availability:	despatched in 1 working day

What you say

1 person has reviewed this record. It made them ecstatic! Write a review!

Last 1 review(s):

Rating: ecstatic This record left David feeling ecstatic.

Wow wow wow wow wow. This is great. I can, honestly, listen to it on repeat without getting bored of it, and I can't say that about many other albums.
I have to admit, I didn't "get" the Stevens at first, but songs like 'Rake' (from a Sun Came) won me over.
This album has some really amazing moments, and the three versions of 'Chicago' demonstrate not only Stevens ability to write songs, but also to arrange and orchestrate them.
He's a bit like the imaginary indie brother of Joanna Newsom, Cat Power and Devendra Banhart, who's been bought up by David Pajo (in his later, folky, Papa M period), with uncle Will Oldham and Bill Callahan coming round for sunday lunch. And yet, despite his similarity to these artists, he stands apart from them, putting his own unique stamp on everything he does.

Review date: 04 December 2006

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Give us your opinion on Illinoise by Sufjan Stevens.

What we say

Rating: ecstatic This record left our Clint feeling ecstatic.

So I'm brilliant. Have you heard? I'm years ahead of my time. Good old me eh? You probably don't remember me rabbiting on and on droning endlessly about Sufjan Stevens 'Michigan' album years and years ago. Before you could even be bothered to be born. Hang on, I think I'm turning into Everett True. Anyway here's Sufjan's new album 'Illinoise' - its gonna be terribly difficult to review in 5 minutes as 'Michigan' is still growing on me to this day. Lets just buy it now and ask questions later eh? For the uninitiated its complicated folky music that takes influence from Nick Drake, Philip Glass, Elliott Smith, Speed the Plough (or the Trypes!!), Sea and Cake and Danielson Famile. On first listen it sounds worryingly chirpy but lets give it some time. The song titles are superb. On Rough Trade.

What the label says:

like the self-proclaimed 'spiderman' who climbed chicago's sears tower with no harness, sufjan stevens scales dusty prairies, steel factories, and two hundred years of history in the

second installment of his 50 state project, illinois, a 22-track anthematic tone poem to the prairie state. an engrossing musical road trip, illinois takes you through ghost towns, grain
mills, hospital rooms, and the city of broad shoulders, with guest appearances by a poet, a

president, a serial murderer, ufos, superman, the goat that cursed the cubs, and decatur's
famous chickenmobile. sufjan weaves variegated musical styles (jazz, funk, pop, folk, and
rodgers and hammerstein-like flourishes) and the textures of 25 instruments into a
tapestry of persons and places famous, infamous, iconic and anonymous. invoking the muse
of poet carl sandburg, illinois ushers in trumpets on parade, string quartets, female
choruses and ambient piano scales arranged around stevens' emerging falsetto. album of the month july 2005. american