Last one in is me

I'm probably the last person on the planet who listens regularly to independent music and had not really heard Sufjan Steven's Illinois album until today. Obviously I had investigated it a couple times, but in every case I had decided that it didn't seem to appeal enough to me. Then I just downloaded the whole thing from eMusic (gotta kill those 90 downloads somehow). Put it this way: I've already listened to the whole thing three times today. And I don't generally do that.

I'm sure if you know who Sufjan Stevens is I don't have to tell you this, but on the off chance that there's someone out there who might be even more woeful than I was, you've gotta give this thing a shot. It is, I must stress, almost surreally good. You'd think that an entire album themed around a state would be a total clusterfuck, but in fact it holds together like crazy. It begs to be listened through all the way - and while I have to say the first half is better (it's certainly where the best full-length songs lie), it's all excellent.

Stevens cheats a little bit on the theme; tiny instrumental bits that are really just codas to full-length songs get their own names (such as "Let's Hear That String Part Again, Because I Don't Think They Heard It All the Way Out in Bushnell") just so he can work in another reference, but that's obviously a minimal complaint at best (except when it comes to eMusic, where 22 tracks does kind of chew up the old download count). The full songs are uniformly great, with a handful being, in all seriousness, instant classics. This has to be considered a top five album of the decade so far for everything it accomplishes. And yes, I know everyone else in the world already realized this (the album was #1 on Metacritic for 2005).

Top five songs:

1. Casimir Pulaski Day
2. Chicago
3. Jacksonville
4. Come On! Feel the Illinoise!
5. Decatur, or, Round of Applause for Your Stepmother!

"John Wayne Gacy, Jr." is actually a good song too, but it creeps me out too much to be top five.