Illinois

Sufjan Stevens announced early in his career that he intended to make an album for each of the fifty United States. He has since admitted it was a joke. Illinois is the second entry in that project and the last state he actually completed, and whatever the original gimmick was meant to be, what he made is one of the most genuinely moving and startling albums of the last thirty years.

Stevens recorded it himself across various locations in New York City between late 2004 and early 2005. The piano was recorded in the dead of night at an Episcopal church in Brooklyn. The string quartet was recorded at someone named Marla's apartment in Washington Heights. The quiet parts were recorded at his own apartment. He produced the whole thing using lo-fi equipment he knew how to operate himself, painstakingly composing all the arrangements around a skeleton of banjo, guitar, piano, brass, woodwinds, and vocals layered into something that sounds like a full orchestra assembled from found parts.

The album contains twenty-two tracks and covers the history and mythology of Illinois through the lens of someone who treats every subject, from the Great Chicago Fire to John Wayne Gacy to a personal story about losing a friend to bone cancer, with the same degree of earnest, unsentimental care. "Casimir Pulaski Day" is a grief song that will stop you completely. "Come On! Feel the Illinoise!" builds from a soft folk opening into something enormous that keeps surprising you at every turn. "Chicago" closes the album's first act with six minutes of pure uplift that has soundtracked a hundred films and still sounds fresh.

On your first full listen, give it your whole afternoon. It rewards patience in a way that few albums do.