Sufjan ('soof-yahn') Stevens came to take us outrageously into a predatory prairie progress through the expansive eclectic incarnation of this eccentric emotional exposition. Born in Detroit, Michigan, he released his debut album A Sun Came on his own Asthmatic Kitty Records while studying at Hope College in Holland, Michigan. He earned a master of fine arts from The New School in New York City while he recorded his second album, the electronica infused Enjoy Your Rabbit, which was inspired by the Chinese zodiac. His next release 'Michigan' was the first installment of his "Fifty States Project", followed by a collection of previously recorded songs called ' Seven Swans'.
For the second "States" release, Stevens decided to focus on Illinois: "[The Midwest is] very familiar to me because that’s where I’m from. It’s kind of a cultural pivot in a way. I feel like specifically Illinois and Chicago are sort of the center of gravity for the American Midwest. Chicago is a major city in the U.S., it’s the third largest city, I think, and it’s such a vibrant and healthy city. And Illinois generally just seems very much like a healthy, industrious kind of average American state. I chose Illinois because it wasn’t a great leap from Michigan, and I feel like there are similar themes, similar cultural idiosyncrasies and characteristics between the two, but to me Illinois seems more successful in some ways, more fully realized ... I think what motivated me the most is that with Michigan, I didn't feel like I'd achieved what I wanted to achieve. I felt like musically there were personal goals that I wanted to meet. I felt an incredible amount of pressure from myself, because I had this concrete vision. And I was so desperate to believe that I had the capacity to realize this vision for these songs, and I don't know if I achieved that, but that's what motivated me."
'Illinois' credits Sufjan Stevens on acoustic guitar, piano, Wurlitzer, bass guitar, drums, electric guitar, oboe, alto saxophone, flute, banjo, glockenspiel, accordion, vibraphone, alto, sopranino recorder, soprano recorder, tenor recorder, Casiotone MT-70, sleigh bells, shaker, tambourine, triangle, electronic organ, vocals, arrangements, engineering, recording, and production; Julianne Carney and Rob Moose on violin; Alan Douches did the mastering at West West Side Music, Tenafly, New Jersey; Marla Hansen on viola; The Illinoisemaker Choir (Tom Eaton, Jennifer Hoover, Katrina Kerns, Beccy Lock, and Tara McDonnell) on backing vocals and clapping for "The Black Hawk War, or, How to Demolish an Entire Civilization and Still Feel Good About Yourself in the Morning, or, We Apologize for the Inconvenience but You're Going to Have to Leave Now, or, 'I Have Fought the Big Knives and Will Continue to Fight Them Until They Are Off Our Lands!'", "Chicago", "The Man of Metropolis Steals Our Hearts", "They Are Night Zombies!! They Are Neighbors!! They Have Come Back from the Dead!! Ahhhh!", and "The Tallest Man, the Broadest Shoulders"; Maria Bella Jeffers on cello; Katrina Kerns on backing vocals for "Concerning the UFO Sighting Near Highland, Illinois", "Come On! Feel the Illinoise!", "Jacksonville", "Prairie Fire That Wanders About", "The Predatory Wasp of the Palisades Is Out to Get Us!", "The Seer's Tower", "The Tallest Man, the Broadest Shoulders", and "The Avalanche"; James McAlister on drums and drum engineering; Craig Montoro on trumpet and backing vocals for "They Are Night Zombies!! They Are Neighbors!! They Have Come Back from the Dead!! Ahhhh!"; Matt Morgan on backing vocals for "Decatur, or, Round of Applause for Your Stepmother!"; Daniel and Elin Smith on backing vocals and clapping for "Decatur, or, Round of Applause for Your Stepmother!"; Divya Srinivasan on artwork; and Shara Worden on backing vocals for "Concerning the UFO Sighting Near Highland, Illinois", "Come On! Feel the Illinoise!", "John Wayne Gacy, Jr.", "Casimir Pulaski Day", "Prairie Fire That Wanders About", "The Predatory Wasp of the Palisades Is Out to Get Us!", "The Seer's Tower", "The Tallest Man, the Broadest Shoulders", and "The Avalanche".
Stevens reveals: "It was a little bit complicated, because I don’t think I was expecting to do so much. I had a vision that was very grand and epic, and a lot of times I think the songs I write on the piano lend themselves to more embellished arrangements. Some of the song started turning into Broadway musicals, with multipart harmonies, and woodwinds and trumpets. I just kind of went crazy, and I had so much time to work on it. I had four months to start writing, and researching, and record everything, so I pretty much used all that time ... I think this is the first record I recorded primarily in one place, and that was a studio in Queens, in Astoria, here in New York. I still used my antiquated 8-track recorder, which is a piece of junk, but that’s because I didn’t want to use an engineer at the studio, I wanted to do everything myself. So even though I was in this great studio, I wasn’t using their preamps or their ProTools setup or anything...For this one, I was going for kind of a dramatic, Broadway musical style, which was pretty broad; I could do pretty much whatever I wanted to. I wanted it to be a real survey, kind of a historical survey, but I didn’t want it to be heavy with information; I didn’t want it to be too political, and I didn’t want it to be too didactic. So I had to somehow monitor everything with kind of a sense of self-discovery and conviction, and an emotional landscape within me, personally. That was the overall goal of the record. It was kind of ambitious from the start, because I knew I wanted it to be really big and on a grand scale. I wanted it to be almost like a movie soundtrack, but without the movie."
'Illinois' peaked at number one hundred and twenty-one on the Billboard 200 album chart, and went to number eighty-six in Australia, eighty in the Netherlands, thirty-four in Norway, four on the US independent album chart and number one on the Billboard heatseekers album chart. The album was a critical favorite that year and won the 2005 New Pantheon Award. Stevens says: "It's all based in settings in Illinois, and uses Illinois as a context, but really, the record is much broader. It's more about universal things. It's about my imagination, it's about my understanding of industrialism in the Midwest, it's about the Midwest in general, it's about human beings, you know... It's about much bigger things. Illinois is just kind of a veneer over the fabric of the record. That's why the cover art is so silly. It's sort of meant immediately to disarm you, and let you know that it's just this big silly advertisement. At first glance, it's really just a pun."
http://music.sufjan.com/
lyrics:
http://genius.com/albums/Sufjan-stevens/Illinois
"Chicago"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFrG6S0GnhU
"Concerning the UFO Sighting Near Highland, Illinois"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4b0fdETmRng
"John Wayne Gacy Jr."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otx49Ko3fxw
"The Man of Metropolis Steals Our Hearts"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJfOOghrP1E
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ND7hZdNLqM
"They Are Night Zombies!! They Are Neighbors!! They Have Come Back from the Dead!! Ahhhh!"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRFfm5OUDZU
'Illinois'
full album:
http://music.sufjan.com/album/illinois
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL1x1z5LTzxlWEKXwh12gQdzlJ2HRUxun9
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=426jqFZa99Y
All songs written and composed by Sufjan Stevens and published by New Jerusalem Music, ASCAP.
1. "Concerning the UFO Sighting Near Highland, Illinois": 0:00
2. "The Black Hawk War" 2:09
3. "Come On! Feel the Illinoise!": 4:23
4. "John Wayne Gacy Jr.": 11:08
5. "Jacksonville": 14:27
6. "A Short Reprise for Mary Todd, Who Went Insane, but for Very Good Reasons": 19:51
7. "Decatur, or, Round of Applause for Your Stepmother!": 20:38
8. "One Last 'Whoo-Hoo!' for the Pullman": 23:41
9. "Chicago": 23:47
10. "Casimir Pulaski Day": 29:51
11. "To the Workers of the Rock River Valley Region, I Have an Idea Concerning Your Predicament": 35:45
12. "The Man of Metropolis Steals Our Hearts": 37:25
13. "Prairie Fire That Wanders About": 43:42
14. "A Conjunction of Drones Simulating the Way in Which Sufjan Stevens Has an Existential Crisis in the Great Godfrey Maze": 45:53
15. "The Predatory Wasp of the Palisades Is Out to Get Us!": 46:12
16. "They Are Night Zombies!! They Are Neighbors!! They Have Come Back from the Dead!! Ahhhh!": 51:35
17. "Let's Hear That String Part Again, Because I Don't Think They Heard It All the Way Out in Bushnell": 56:44
18. "In This Temple as in the Hearts of Man for Whom He Saved the Earth": 57:24
19. "The Seer's Tower": 57:59
20. "The Tallest Man, the Broadest Shoulders": 1:01:53
21. "Riffs and Variations on a Single Note for Jelly Roll, Earl Hines, Louis Armstrong, Baby Dodds, and the King of Swing, to Name a Few": 1:08:56
22. "Out of Egypt, into the Great Laugh of Mankind, and I Shake the Dirt from My Sandals as I Run": 1:09:42
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