Blender - August 2005
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Reviewed by Brian Raftery
There are plenty of reasons to be wigged out by 30-year-old Sufjan (pronounced SOOF-yan) Stevens: He writes pop-folk songs about Superman and serial killers, and occasionally performs them in a giant swan costume. Yet despite such on-the-surface whimsy, Illinois—the second in a promised 50-album series chronicling every U.S. state - is doggedly sincere. When Stevens stretches out his simple acoustic ditties with big-ambition arrangements, as on the unfortunately titled “Come On! Feel the Illinoise!,” he turns a pleasant-enough Sunday-drive serenade into a multilayered celebration of ingenuity; when he reigns it all in, a song like “John Wayne Gacy, Jr.” becomes as haunting as its titular serial killer. It’s a mesmerizing history lesson.
DOWNLOAD: “Jacksonville,” “Chicago”