The first time I ever heard about Sufjan Stevens was when my friend in Finland, who worked at a record store, played a couple of songs to me. I was blown away by the sounds and I borrowed the album from him and copied it on a mini-disc. This was right after the release of this album in 2005. Later on in the same year, I travelled with the same friend to Berlin for the new year and I remember vividly when I was listening to this album on the mini-disc at the Tegel airport when we were waiting for the plane to take us home. That moment was just perfection. I had a good trip behind me, I was tired and happy to go home and the music was just perfect. After that moment I have realised that Come on Feel the Illinoise is one of my all-time favourite albums. And of course I bought the album really soon after I copied that mini-disc. There were multiple different album covers for this album. I have the one with the superman on it, so that is what I wanted to link to this post as well.
The topics of the songs on this album are all about the state of Illinois. There is a song about UFO sightings, songs about cities and towns, such as Chicago and Jacksonville and about a serial killer John Wayne Gacy Jr. which is one of my all time favourite songs that I myself have often played on a guitar or a piano. This song is just one of the most beautiful songs ever made, which is a bit funny considering the macabre topic of the song. Many of the songs on the album have very long song titles. As a good example, let's mention They Are Night Zombies!! They Are Neighbours!! They Have Come Back from the Dead!! Ahhhh!! and Let's hear that string part again, because I don't think they heard it all the way out in Bushnell.
Little bit more than a year ago I was in Chicago for a holiday and to prepare myself for the trip I listened to this album a lot. To me, that was the first thing that I associated with the state of Illinois.
I don't know how much of this is actually true, but I have understood that Stevens started his career by making electronic noisy and experimental music and since his parents were partly supporting his career as a musician, they said he would have to try and make a bit more approachable music or they would cut the funding. After that Stevens started adopting more Americana folk influences to his music and made a couple of fantastic albums, Michigan and Seven Swans. However, his music wasn't perfected until he added some of that experimentalism into his newly adopted folk sounds in Illinois.
Even though I've already mentioned this song before, I just have to link the music video for John Wayne Gacy Jr. here, because that is definitely the most important song for me from this album. In the video, there are scenes from idyllic America, but within that scenery, John Wayne Gacy is picking up young boys from the neighbourhood. He raped and killed at least 33 teenage boys and young men in the 70's.
What's even more astonishing about this album is that there was another album after it, called The Avalanche, that included enough outtakes from Illinois to make a whole other album. There are some excellent tunes on that album as well, but it just goes to show how productive Stevens was during this period and the album turned out so amazing because Stevens had so many songs to choose from to make this beautiful album.
What can I say, I have listened to this album for about 13 years now and there are no signs that I would ever get bored with it. It's one of the greatest masterpieces of the 00's.
Listen to the album on Spotify.
No comments:
Post a Comment