Ground Rule Double

           Question: What would happen if you threw Vince Guaraldi, R.E.M, George Gershwin, Garrison Keilior, John Updike, a history textbook, a full philharmonic orchestra, and a serial-killer clown into a blender? The result would be a dazzling, awe-inspiring, smooth yet mercurial compound that molds itself into Sufjan Stevens’ crowning achievement, “Illinois” (Or as it is more affectionately known on the cover, “Sufjan Stevens presents: Come on, Feel the Illinoise”).

            Stevens, as you may already be painfully aware of, began to embark on an incredibly ambitious project to write an album about every state in the union. After finding critical success with his first entry in the project, “Michigan”, he took a year to create a pseudo-Christian folk album (“Seven Swans”, which I also recommend), only to return in 2005 with the masterpiece of an album that sits before us today. Frustratingly enough, he has failed to follow up with any legitimate new efforts since then, and his increasing isolationism is approaching Salinger-esque levels. Nonetheless, it makes “Illinois” all the more powerful, as what (for now) seems like the swan song for Sufjan’s heyday, the pinnacle of his brilliance.

            The first thing that strikes you about “Illinois” is the titles of the songs themselves; rife with cultural and historical allusions, they serve to almost paint a small story within themselves, similar to the manner in which the entire album serves to create a fascinating and powerful portrait of a state’s quirky history, and the tales of humanity that shaped it. The album opens with the calm and effervescent, “Concerning the UFO Sighting near Highland, Illinois”, a subdued track that creates the atmosphere of a young, serene frontier state, setting the stage for a small quasi-chronological retrospective of the state’s maturation that establishes the album’s opening tracks.

The album then transitions into one of the most beautiful instrumental pieces I have ever heard, "The Black Hawk War”, or as it is officially known, “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!'". The piece reminds me the most of Dimitri Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 5, as it is piece that at the surface level sounds like a monument to the grandeur and glory of American expansion. When more closely scrutinized, however, the piece is a lamentful and brooding ode to the obliteration of the identity of an entire group of peoples; the innocence and beauty of the minimalist woodwind opening is joined by the militaristic blare of the horns, the two at first contrasting in equilibrium until the triumphant croon of the trumpet drowns out the flutes and oboes to only a faint whisper of their former prominence.

            The album then suddenly and swiftly turns into its title track, a two part epic that evolves from an upbeat, syncopated portrait of the industrial revolution and the glory of the World’s Fair era to a blossoming, poetic, and highly personal examination recounting a perceived encounter with the ghost of poet Carl Sandberg, punctuated by one of my favorite lines on the album, “Even in his heart the devil has to know the water level; are you writing from the heart?” From here, Stevens moves into the haunting “John Wayne Gacy, Jr.”, a harrowing and graphic profile of the clown who worked the night shift as a serial killing pedophile, focusing intensely on the idea of hidden and unsuspected secrets, capped off by the chilling line, “And in my best behavior I am really just like him/ Look beneath the floorboards for the secrets I have hidden”. It’s enough to send chills down anyone’s spine.

            The album from here takes a turn into a more intimate profile of the human element behind the urban legends and local histories, a look at the inner person behind it all. “Decatur, or, Round of Applause for Your Step Mother!” is truly beautiful in its minimalism, and Sufjan’s use of short, “punctuation” tracks such as “One last Woohoo! For the Pullman” serve to create a completeness and continuity through the album’s thematic development.

            The album then moves into its most fertile and magnificent portion; when I first heard “Chicago”, I was simply mesmerized. “Illinois” was a good album up until this track. “Chicago” made it a truly great album; my words cannot do the song justice, you really just have to listen to it. The track that follows, however, cemented this album in my personal musical panetheon. “Casmir Pulaski Day” is arguably the single most beautiful piece of music created in the past twenty years; the minimalist strumming guitar and plucking banjo, juxtaposed against the soft, passionate, haunted vocals by Sufjan is a soul-baring, heartfelt masterpiece about loss and persistence of memory. The subdued croon of the trumpet at the 2:25 mark creates an ethereal atmosphere that almost puts you within the intimate memories without penetrating the prevailing minimalism. It is a truly touching expression of the emotion and memory that accompany loss; the last lyric, “And he takes and he takes and he takes” harkens upon the prevailing Christian and religious overtones that punctuate much of Sufjan’s music. “The Man of Metropolis Steals Our Hearts” examines Superman in the context of a Christ-like figure, and its contrasting hard-edged guitar chorus with the subdued harp during the verse creates a somewhat surreal and otherworldly atmosphere. “The Predatory Wasp of the Palisades is Out to Get Us!” builds upon this idea of the prevalence of memory along with a sense of loneliness, the result of Sufjan’s minimalism combined with one of his best lyrical efforts on the album (“Thinking outrageously, I write in cursive/ I hide in my bed with the lights on the floor”).

            “Palisades” also serves as a transition piece of sorts, as the album from here moves into a colder, more serious introspective of memory and history more in the tone of “John Wayne Gacy, Jr”. The song “They Are Night Zombies!! They Are Neighbors!! They Have Come back from the Dead!! Ahhhh!” creates a chilling atmosphere defined by the razor-sharp hum of violins. There is a sense of atmospheric emptiness in this part of the album; “In this Temple as in the Hearts of Man for Whom He Saved the Earth” gives, as the title suggests, the feeling of aloneness in the presence of a larger force; it is inspired by the famous inscription on the Lincoln memorial, and there is a truly ethereal feeling about the entire piece. “The Seer’s Tower” (a twist on the famous Chicago skyscraper) is a chilling song filled with religious allusions, and it creates a sense of isolation and coldness; Stevens croons, “Still I go to the deepest grave/ where I go to sleep alone”, and the song fades out into a haunting chorus of oohs and aahs, fading into oblivion.

            Stevens then jumps back into an upbeat, jazzy mood with “The Tallest Man, the Broadest Shoulders”, a two-part piece that serves as a counterpoint of sorts to the title-track earlier on; the allusions to Abraham Lincoln are blatant, and the 5/4 time creates a Brubeck-ian feel to the first part. The second part moves back into 4/4, and it’s almost dreamlike in its examination of the plights Chicago has faced in its storied history and its resilience in the face of them. It fades into the ethereal “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”, a beautiful, expressionistic piece that stays true to its name. The album comes to a close with the upbeat, mystically repetitive, percussive “Out Of Egypt, Into The Great Laugh Of Mankind, And I Shake The Dirt From My Sandals As I Run”. The collective of looping instruments is calamitous yet strangely beautiful, and the manner in which the final seconds of the album fade out in the minimalistic clinking of a xylophone captures the real heart of this album, as a raw testament to the fortitude of man.

            In the end, “Illinois” is nothing short of a triumph; it is arguably the best album of the past 20 years; it is a minimalistic monument to Sufjan Stevens’ multi-instrumental genius. Oh, right, I almost forgot to mention that; HE PLAYS NEARLY EVERY SINGLE INSTRUMENT USED ON THIS ALBUM. There are too many allusions and connections to keep track of; I suggest consulting Wikipedia if you want to make even an attempt at it. On paper, the album looks like an oversaturated mass of too many instruments, too many concepts, and too many stylistic shifts. However, the result is nothing short of a masterpiece, and as such, “Illinois” is a work of sheer brilliance, and anyone who loves music truly needs to hear this album.