Sold Date: November 28, 2022
Start Date: August 11, 2022
Final Price: €22.99 (EUR)
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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.

Trackliste

A1 Concerning The Ufo Sighting Near Highland, Illinois
A2 The Black Hawk War, Or, How To Demolish An Entire Civilization And Still Feel
A3 Come On! Feel The Illinoise! Part I: The World's Columbian Exposition Part Ii:
A4 John Wayne Gacy, Jr
A5 Jacksonville
A6 A Short Reprise For Mary Todd, Who Went Insane, But For Very Good Reasons
B1 Decatur, Or, Round Of Applause For Your Step Mother!
B2 One Last Whoo-Hoo! For The Pullman!!
B3 Go! Chicago! Go! Yeah!
B4 Casimir Pulaski Day
B5 To The Workers Of The Rock River Valley Region, I Have An Idea Concerning Your
C1 The Man Of Metropolis Steals Our Hearts
C2 Prairie Fire That Wanders About
C3 A Conjunction Of Drones Simulating The Way In Which Sufjan Stevens Has An
C4 The Predatory Wasp Of The Palisades Is Out To Get Us!
C5 They Are Night Zombies!! They Are Neighbors!! They Have Come Back From The
C6 Let's Hear That String Part Again, Because I Don't Think They Heard It All The
C7 In This Temple As In The Hearts Of Man For Whom He Saved The Earth
D1 The Seer's Tower
D2 The Tallest Man, The Broadest Shoulders Part 1: The Great Frontier Part 2: Come
D3 Riffs & Variations On A Single Note For Jelly Roll, Earl Hines, Louis
D4 Out Of Egypt, Into The Great Laugh Of Mankind, & I Shake The Dirt From My
D5 The Ava Lanche