Given the outline of this record (wherein the whispering banjo player concocts an album-length ode to the state of Illinois), you could be forgiven for expecting an album full of knocked-off songs about the Cubs, hot-dogs and Carl Sandburg. But, as Sufjan Stevens proved on last year’s Seven Swans, things sound much better when there is heart and soul behind them. Okay, so you do get a song about Carl. You also get the feeling that Stevens became mystified by the pioneering spirit when creating this and sought to flush out his awe and wonder through song. Which might sound hokey, but this is more than an indie rock retelling of Oklahoma! This is instead an album whose most stark and stunning moment is in its telling of the mass-murderer John Wayne Gacy, Jr. There is real joy and loss within these unwieldy song titles (try putting “To the Workers of the Rockford River Valley Region, I have an Idea Concerning Your Predicament” on your next mixtape) and when he begins singing, “What have we become America?/Soldiers on the Great Frontier,” you begin to realize there is some universal truth buried in these spiritually-tinged folk musings.