Sufjan Stevens - Michigan

Michigan is the third studio album by American indie folk musician Sufjan Stevens, originally released in July 2003 via Asthmatic Kitty Records.

Styled Sufjan Stevens Presents... Greetings From Michigan, The Great Lake State on the cover, Michigan is a concept album and featuring songs referencing places, events, and persons related to the U.S. state of Michigan, part of a planned series of fifty that began with the 2003 album ‘Michigan’ and that Stevens has since acknowledged was a joke.

Michigan is a charming homage to his home state of Michigan. Filled with heartbreak, the album cryptically addresses Stevens' frustration with the notorious job market in the city of Flint in a lovely ballad that opens the record, and documents the depressing struggle the city of Detroit has fought to once again attain the elegance it had prior to the riots in the late '60s

It also touches on a brighter side, as in the cascading "Say Yes! to M!ch!gan!" Its title is a reference to the campaign adopted by the state in the 1980s and serves as the centrepiece as well as Stevens' attachment and amour for the state he is from.

Musically, Stevens often riffs along with complex polyphony in building loops and dynamics, but he also frequently imports lightly strummed guitars and stark banjo picking to break up the album and give it a rustic northern folk aesthetic.

Stevens comfortably handles nearly every instrument on the album, but also enlisted the help of Megan, Elin, and Daniel Smith from the Danielson Famile to help out with vocal duties, and the outcome is a haunting and hypnotic studio opus certainly worth getting lost in.

This double album 2LP record set is a 2023 repress on black vinyl housed in a gatefold sleeve, pressed in the US via Asthmatic Kitty Records.