Sufjan Stevens
Illinoise

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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