The New Classics is a reoccurring segment in which we examine our favorite indie releases that are bound to replace our parent’s “classic rock” stash hidden in the attic or the basement. These aren’t reviews, these are uneditied testimonies and opinions about why we love what we love. Can we get a witness?

Words by Jacob Barron

Album: Illinois
Artist: Sufjan Stevens
Released: 2005
Label: Asthmatic Kitty
Produced by: Sufjan Stevens

As I think a lot of people do, I tend to discover music backwards, meaning I heard this album first and it opened up a whole other world of musical possibilities that had already been considered classics for decades. From Sufjan Stevens‘ Illinois, any dedicated listener can find entry routes into everything from Steve Reich to Dave Brubeck to Vince Guaraldi to Pavement to Neil Young to a slew of other artists. To make an extremely topical analogy, the album is Lake Michigan, and invites its visitors to follow all the different rivers and tributaries that empty into it.

The things about Illinois that made me instantly love it are countless, but if I had to pick one, I’d totally nerd out and pick option A, the use of non-traditional time signatures. No one has made bizarre time signatures sound so natural before, at least not in my experience. Up to that point, I don’t really think I had heard anyone even try to make them sound natural. When you talk about weird time signatures, you’re basically talking about making it impossible for people to dance, or basically setting people up for embarrassment should your bizarrely-timed song ever make it to the disco. For pranksters interested in achieving this, I’d recommend writing something that starts in standard old 4/4, then switches to something wacky, like 5/4 or 7/8 or whatever. That way everyone comes out all cocky and then has to jerk around when beats start to go missing. That’s right, cocky dancefloor guy trying to wow that brunette with your moves, 5/4 just owned you and ruined your chances. Your ankle probably hurts too. Hang your head in shame.

Or, in a lot of other cases, when you’re talking about weird time signatures, you’re talking about metal. Metal uses weird time signatures to be aggressive or to suggest that something is off kilter. Like, say you’re at a concert with a guy up there, on stage, the one with corpse makeup. Yes him. He has a huge sickle hidden under his cloak and he’s gripping it with weirdly long fingers and staring at you while screaming about the apocalypse. Such a scene begs to be soundtracked by a song in 7/4, which metal may use to make you uncomfortable. Weird time signatures are just another feather in their cap that allows them to do that.

Stevens’ work, in 5/4 (“Come On! Feel the Illinoise!” and “The Tallest Man, The Broadest Shoulders”) and whatever time signature “Concerning the UFO Sighting in Highland, Illinois” is in, fits into neither of these categories. They’re the rare tunes that exhibit technical virtuosity without requiring it of their listeners. The two tunes in 5/4 are ones that you can actually groove to, or are songs to which you can groove, if you’re a grammar nazi. As has been mentioned in column after column, I do most of my music-listening while traveling, and I’ve drifted into countless lanes using both hands to produce the hand claps, alone in my car, listening to “The Tallest Man.” And I think it’s safe to say that my steering wheel has certainly felt the Illinoise, as I tend to erupt into a fit of red-handed wheel-slapping whenever I hear the glorious bum bum bum, ba bum bums which, if you’ve heard it, you understand.

The rest of the album divides its time according to no discernible plan. “John Wayne Gacy, Jr.” is an ode to Illinois’ most notable serial killer that manages to inspire both empathy and the heebie-jeebies. It creeps you out while breaking your heart, and it’s as bizarre a feeling as that sounds like it would be. “Jacksonville” is breezy train ride through Nichol’s Park that’s fraught with historical and geographical references and other interesting Illinois tidbits, but you don’t have to understand any of that. It’s relaxing and fun and catchy. Same with “Decatur, or, Round of Applause for Your Stepmother!,” which has the most awesome rhymes this side of Wu-Tang, all of them rhyming with the song’s titular township. That song alone also has the dubious honor of making me want to buy a banjo.

Throughout the album, there’s an eye for detail that I doubt has been equaled, or, if it has, it’s probably comes off a lot more turgid than this does. A good portion of the lyrics address tiny, touching domestic dramas, and paint what I’d imagine is a pretty accurate picture of what it must be like to grow up in Illinois, in places and histories and experiences. The real accomplishment of it all is how easy it is to relate to. Even though I don’t have a brother and have never been to the Mississippi Palisades State Park (in Western Illinois), I can picture myself wearing his red hat as a boy, and playing with a friend who gets stung by a wasp (“The Predatory Wasp of the Palisades Is Out to Get Us!”). I can imagine driving in a van to Chicago and sleeping in parking lots and also crying (“Chicago”). In the album’s most melancholy triumph, I can imagine the sadness and confusion of being young and losing someone to bone cancer (“Casimir Pulaski Day,” possibly the saddest, best song of the last twenty years).

It’s an enormous task that Stevens somehow managed to pull-off, filled with little instrumental interludes that all fit together into one giant 74-minute masterpiece that goes good with forward movement. I’d imagine listening to it in Illinois would be even more exciting, although maybe a little overwhelming. If nothing else, if you can’t at least giggle at song titles like “They Are Night Zombies!! They Are Neighbors!! They Have Come Back from the Dead!! Ahhhh!” or “A Short Reprise for Mary Todd, Who Went Insane, but for Very Good Reasons,” well then I just really don’t know if there’s anything I can do for you.

Feel it! The Illinoise, that is! 2 out of 2 blown eardrums (wherein the eardrums have burst due to overexposure to the aforementioned Illinoise).

1. “Concerning the UFO Sighting Near Highland, Illinois”
2. “The Black Hawk War, or, How to Demolish an Entire Civilization and Still Feel Good About Yourself in the Morning, or, We Apologize for the Inconvenience but You’re Going to Have to Leave Now, or, ‘I Have Fought the Big Knives and Will Continue to Fight Them Until They Are Off Our Lands!’”
3. “Come On! Feel the Illinoise!” (Part I: The World’s Columbian Exposition — Part II: Carl Sandburg Visits Me in a Dream)
4. “John Wayne Gacy, Jr”
5. “Jacksonville”
6. “A Short Reprise for Mary Todd, Who Went Insane, but for Very Good Reasons”
7. “Decatur, or, Round of Applause for Your Stepmother!”
8. “One Last ‘Whoo-Hoo!’ for the Pullman”
9. “Chicago”
10. “Casimir Pulaski Day”
11. “To the Workers of the Rock River Valley Region, I Have an Idea Concerning Your Predicament”
12. “The Man of Metropolis Steals Our Hearts”
13. “Prairie Fire That Wanders About”
14. “A Conjunction of Drones Simulating the Way in Which Sufjan Stevens Has an Existential Crisis in the Great Godfrey Maze”
15. “The Predatory Wasp of the Palisades Is Out to Get Us!”
16. “They Are Night Zombies!! They Are Neighbors!! They Have Come Back from the Dead!! Ahhhh!”
17. “Let’s Hear That String Part Again, Because I Don’t Think They Heard It All the Way Out in Bushnell”
18. “In This Temple as in the Hearts of Man for Whom He Saved the Earth”
19. “The Seer’s Tower”
20. “The Tallest Man, the Broadest Shoulders” (Part I: The Great Frontier — Part II: Come to Me Only with Playthings Now)
21. “Riffs and Variations on a Single Note for Jelly Roll, Earl Hines, Louis Armstrong, Baby Dodds, and the King of Swing, to Name a Few”
22. “Out of Egypt, into the Great Laugh of Mankind, and I Shake the Dirt from My Sandals as I Run”

Filed under: New Classics