The state we’re in
Sufjan Stevens continues his American journey
By Jude Rogers

Now here’s a project: 50 albums about the 50 American states. Illinois is Stevens’s second after 2003’s 17-track Greetings From Michigan, an album full of beautifully complicated, orchestral folk songs – all vibraphones, trumpets, cymbals and choral vocals – talking of strange Michigan characters like naysayers and the “fatherless in Ypilisanti”. Sounds twee, but I took it on holiday last year and fell hopelessly in love. Illinois is an even more ambitious record: 22 tracks devoted to state fancies like UFO sightings, the predatory wasp of the Palisades and Jelly Roll Morton: the state’s mythological creatures, both ancient and modern. And the music seems to travel in time from then to now.

Illinois owes a lot to modern classical music that uses medieval scales and sounds. Michael Nyman’s simple piano pieces and
Steve Reich’s minimalist symphonies – think Brian Eno’s Music For Airports if you want an easier reference – are all over this record, creating a spooky, old-fashioned ambience. Stevens’s Christianity, all Bible-study classes and following stars (dont let it put you off), adds to this lyrically. His voice is delicate like Badly Drawn Boy, with a falsetto like Jeff Buckley’s when he worked at restraint. On John Wayne Gacy Jr, an ode to the serial killer, lines like “they were boys with their cars, summer jobs… oh, are you one of them?” have a tenderness that’s touching. But there are grand things here too, like Come On Feel The IIlinoise, a bustling, courtly dance of a theme tune, that lifts a riff from The Cure’s Close To Me very playfully. Elsewhere there are accordions, drones, armfuls of strings, cooing birds; all kinds of charming craziness. Stevens is only 29. If he does another state every year, he can start on Cumberland and Rutland when he’s 77.

Illinois is on Rough Trade