Sufjan Stevens - Illinoise

Illinoise is the fifth studio album by American indie-folk artist Sufjan Stevens, originally released in July 2005 via Asthmatic Kitty Records.

Styled Sufjan Stevens Invites You To: Come On Feel The Illinoise on the cover; sometimes written as Illinoise, is a concept album featuring songs referencing places, events, and persons related to the U.S. state of Illinois. Illinoise is Stevens' second based on a U.S. state - part of a planned series of fifty that began with the 2003 album ‘Michigan’ and that Stevens has since acknowledged was a joke.

Stevens' folk epics, as played by his signature mini-orchestra, have changed little since his 2003 foray into ‘Michigan’ but there's a newfound optimism that runs through much of Illinoise that echoes the state's "Gateway To The West" pioneering spirit.

Glorious road trip-ready cuts like "The Man Of Metropolis Steals Our Hearts", "Come On! Feel The Illinoise!", and "Chicago" have an expansiveness that radiates with the ballast of history and the promise of new beginnings. Stevens has done his research, with references to everyone from Abe Lincoln, Frank Lloyd Wright, and the ghost of Carl Sandburg to John Wayne Gacy - the latter provides one the song cycle's most affecting moments.

The lush (yet still distinctly lo-fi) indie pop melodies draw as much from classic rock as they do progressive folk. "Jacksonville", with its four-chord banjo lurch, mines "Old Man"-era Neil Young, disco strings dance around "They Are Night Zombies!! They Are Neighbors!! They Have Come Back From The Dead!! Ahhhh!," while the rousing pre-finale "The Tallest Man, The Broadest Shoulders" is pure Peanuts-infused Vince Guaraldi as filtered through the ambiguous kaleidoscope of Danielson Famile spiritualism.

There's a distinct community theatre vibe to the whole affair, but the majority of Illinois is alarmingly earnest.

Stevens may be a snake-oil salesman, but he's got pretty good stuff, and like many of history's most untrustworthy wordsmiths, he somehow manages to switch the opportunist off and turn on the human being each time the listener gets suspicious of his intentions.

This double album 2LP record set is a 2016 reissue on black vinyl housed in a double gatefold sleeve with a printed insert and download code, pressed in the US via Asthmatic Kitty.