Sufjan Stevens has been in the music rags a fair bit this year, as you might (or might not!) have noticed. Much of his reemergence into the spotlight following a few years behind the curtain involves the wonderment and awe inspired by listening to his new record, the impassionately personal Carrie & Lowell. It seems fitting, then, that the attention to the 10th anniversary of what many still consider his opus, Illinois, is amplified in the wake of the heralding of Carrie. The endpoints of this journey, backward from minimalist eulogizing to pomp and whimsy, lie in stark contrast as they tell the musical story of one of the more influential voices of contemporary music.
The first question at the end of most journeys is "what's here?" Everyone wants to know what lies at the end of a trip, wherever it goes or however long it takes. A second, sometimes unasked question, though, is instrumental in painting the full picture and giving any trip or journey substance, meaning and a foothold in memory: "how did we get here?"
In the time between 2005 and now, Stevens took the scenic route: two Christmas albums, a concept album about a highway, an underrated-and-mostly-forgotten EP and a collection of outtakes dot his discography, along with the (for him) monumentally experimental Age of Adz LP in 2010. There is no straight line to be drawn among his waypoints. Adz and the EP, All Delighted People, were released seven weeks apart in fall 2010, a stunning output that seemingly appeared from nowhere, and certainly felt more like the artist people knew from his earlier days. The two are historically attached at the hip, but their twinship is far more fraternal than identical, with the electronics and grand gestures of Adz stealing limelight from the demure statements made on All Delighted. The EP, released first in August 2010, seemed to be one last gasp of folksiness, the last of whatever thoughts didn't quite seem to fit on Illinois or The Avalanche, the former's collection of B-sides and outtakes. Then, as if to cement that idea, Adz rolls out in surprising fashion in October, crashing and buzzing its way into ears unprepared and unaccustomed to such sounds from the man who always seemed to prefer banjos and brass.
No one knew then that was a halfway point between the Sufjan of old and the man of now. It seemed like, at some point following Illinois, he started on a path that suddenly took a 90-degree turn. The course would later "correct," insofar as "Carrie" sounds more like Stevens's first three albums than any resembling Adz, but such a return didn't feel like a sure thing. Perhaps there was some discomfort over this new sound because the five albums that had preceded it seemed to hold to the line of best fit. In truth, we were looking less at a straight line and instead something more parabolic, and "Illinois" is the album that demarcated the peak of that first slope.
Beginning with "Concerning the UFO Sighting" - nearly every song title has to be abbreviated here, for the record - a piano ballad with signature tinges of faith and a soft, breathy delivery, the album is gracefully introduced. The creak of a stool as, we imagine, Stevens re-positions to begin playing casts an immediate glow of immediacy upon the song, as if we're meant to feel like we're sitting beside him and the company he's brought along to play the album. "Concerning" finishes and immediately tumbles into a musical interlude of brass and woodwind on "The Black Hawk War," just one of the album's many interstitials that serve as brief, natural intermissions. "Come On! Feel the Illinoise" is arguably the happiest, bounciest track on the album, fitting of the buoyancy in its name.
What comes next, though, is a striking thematic about-face: a ballad of John Wayne Gacy, an impossibly beautiful song about an impossibly terrible person, and the clash of those two realities is the first major indicator that this album is far from ordinary. "Gacy" lingers in the back of your head as the whimsy returns from "Jacksonville" on through "Decatur" and two other interludes before "Chicago," the album's most recognizable song and the one that may forever be associated with Stevens's name ahead of any other. It's a six-minute microcosm of what makes the album work so well as a whole: choral harmonies and sweeping strings help frame Stevens's delicately-sung verse vocals; chimes and a consistently pounding drum beat pick up the pace for the hooky chorus ("All things go, all things go" is as simple as it gets, but it sticks).
But then Stevens pulls the rug out again on "Casimir Pulaski Day," a heart-wrenching love song to an unnamed person suffering from cancer. It's tinged with the most references to Stevens's faith than any other but, as would become more the norm, his faith is presented as something worthy of as much skepticism than devout trust ("Tuesday night at the Bible study / We lift our hands and pray over your body / But nothing ever happens"). It's minimalism mastered, as the track rarely utilizes more than four tracks at once among a collection of a trumpet, background harmony, keyboard, guitar and banjo. The story told is one of sadness, even though the ending swell of vocals does its best to offset the mood, and "To the Workers" tries to be a 100-second comedown from the experience of "Casimir"; from this point on, though, there is a bittersweet streak to this album that can't be pushed aside.
The melancholy seems to persist into the beginning of "The Man of Metropolis Steals Our Hearts," an ode to, yes, Superman, but the gear shift at the two-minute mark (electric guitar!) elevates the song above the emotional rubble of the previous track, and its place in album context help keep it my favorite among all of Illinois's tracks to this day. Within it, everything else on Illinois that Stevens so patiently and deliberately lays out is condensed into six-and-change minutes.
From there, more air and space is introduced to the album: five instrumental interludes (plus the barely-sung "Prairie Fire That Wanders About") keep the peace between a song about a childhood romp ("The Predatory Wasp"), zombies ("They Are Night Zombies!!") and one about the Sears Tower ("The Seer's Tower"), none of which seem particularly noteworthy with such abstract subjects, but which all seem to hold water both on their own and as part of the album at large. The album's coda comes in the form of "The Tallest Man," the album's longest track, and it's most ebullient and musically curious. All stops are pulled out: brass and woodwinds come out to play, time is kept in some strange meter, lyrical and harmonic interplay is as prevalent as ever through nearly five minutes, before turning into a slow jam over the final two that seamlessly morphs into the album's two concluding instrumental tracks.
Twenty-two tracks in all: thirteen "songs," nine interludes, seventy-five minutes. It's a journey, one that will take you through emotional peaks and valleys, crafting its own world of wonderment in the process. Much like with the journey backward from the Stevens of today to the one of the Illinois era, it's less about where you are at the end and more about how you came to be there.
