Paste - Issue 23 - August 2006
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B-sides/Rarities
3 1/2 stars
By Jesse Jarnow
Illinois is to The Avalanche as Kid A is to Amnesiac
Sufjan Stevens should’ve waited. Some years from now, the 75 minutes worth of outtakes from 2005’s Illinois would’ve dropped like manna. Considered in the future perfect, The Avalanche will have been great. Stevens tours the emotional, historical, literary and literal landscapes of the Prairie State with the same eminently musical savvy he exhibited quite thoroughly on the first pass. Textural experiments float languidly (”Kaskaskia River”), woodwinds swoop (”No Man’s Land”) and Stevens sings in a breathy whisper (”The Pick-Up”). With a few pleasant exceptions, though, the songs simply aren’t as well developed; the album is a shadow version of its decorated predecessor.
Top-loaded with the searching title track and the fantastic “Dear Mr. Supercomputer,” where a Stevens-brand orchestral/choral fantasia mimics the hard bleeps of a vintage processor, the album is punctuated with three variations of “Chicago.” They’re all great. Taken individually, there’s almost nothing seriously wrong with any of the 21 tracks, though there is nothing nearly as brilliant as “Casimir Pulaski Day,” either. Perhaps it’s not the music that makes The Avalanche subpar, but how it shatters the notion that Stevens’ glands naturally pump his brain full of Adderall. Of course, you can’t begrudge him the desire to wind down a little.