There’s a fine line between
“concept” and “gimmick,” and Sufjan Stevens
straddles it admirably on Illinois, his fifth album and the second installment of his
Fifty States project. Invoking Carl Sandburg as his muse, Stevens
commemorates the Prairie State and a motley assemblage of former
residents, including Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln, Frank Lloyd
Wright, Superman, and Ronald Reagan. Whereas 2003’s Greetings From Michigan, The Great Lake State was steeped in memory (it’s Stevens’s
home state, after all), Illinois is the product of research: Before writing the
CD’s 22 songs, Stevens buried himself in books, reading
everything from Saul Bellow novels to out-of-print regional
histories.
On paper, the conceit might seem a little too
precious, a little too Schoolhouse
Rock; through speakers, it’s
unexpectedly moving. Although Stevens’s anthems are big and
declamatory, with all of Sandburg’s brawny extravagance and
dogged populism, their real power derives from intimate
particularities: During a day trip to Decatur, a kid quits hating
his stepmother; on Casimir Pulaski Day, a Bible student questions
his faith as his girlfriend dies of bone cancer. Instead of getting
bogged down in abstractions, as so many concept albums do, or
collapsing in self-satisfied snickers, as all novelty albums do, Illinois strikes
the right balance between the stubborn facts of history and the
irreducible truths of the imagination. In “Carl Sandburg
Visits Me in a Dream,” the stunning second movement of
“Come On! Feel the Illinoise,” the poet’s ghost
repeatedly asks, “Are you writing from the heart?”;
this preoccupation informs even the most whimsical tracks on the
album and transforms what might have been a sterile exercise
— one part term paper, one part Broadway musical — into
an emotionally authentic work of art.
That Stevens is a brilliant composer and arranger
doesn’t hurt, of course. Alternating spare Appalachianisms with
the symphonic sprawl of Van Dyke Parks, he plays upwards of 30
instruments on the CD and outsources the rest to guest musicians;
it’s a testament to his production skills that all the
glockenspiels, string quartets, organs, recorders, and woodwinds
don’t obscure the delicate eloquence of his songs. Whether
he’s whipping up teenage symphonies to God or murmuring over a
solitary banjo, Stevens makes each track work both individually and in
context, an achievement that’s all the more striking given the
variety of sounds and styles. With its twittering recorders,
Stevens’s tuneful quaver, and a few echoing piano chords,
“Concerning the UFO Sighting near Highland, Illinois” comes
off like a lost collaboration between Philip Glass and the Flaming
Lips. The first movement of “Come On Feel the Illinoise!”
erupts in a burst of triumphant horns, martial drums, and a celestial
female chorus before morphing into a bristly piano ditty in 5/4 time.
The unnervingly sympathetic portrait of a serial killer “John
Wayne Gacy, Jr.” relies solely on acoustic guitar, piano, and
Stevens’s tremulous tenor; “Casimir Pulaski Day,” as
ruinously gorgeous as anything on Neil Young’s Harvest, gets by with an
acoustic guitar, the barest trace of banjo, and a lone trumpet.
From the southern-boogie baroque of
“Jacksonville” to the spiky Stax stylings of
“They Are Night Zombies!!,” Illinois co-opts, corrupts,
and converts virtually every American musical genre of the last 200
years. Even the short transitional instrumental pieces are more
interesting and fully realized than most bands’ best songs.
Thirty-year-old Stevens, who still has 48 states left to go,
probably won’t complete his project — if he continues
to crank out one every couple of years, he’ll be 126 by the
time he’s done — but that’s OK. Illinois is more than a
state; it’s an entire cosmology.
This article appears in Aug 18-24, 2005.
