#illanoise

I went for a long walk this morning - listening to this album, which has some completely brilliant music on it, though I find my interest slips somewhere around the middle, it comes back at the end (...It’s very, very (too?)long.) Sufjan Stevens at one point claimed he’d like to write an album for every state in America - a tall order by anyone’s standards - but he seems to have left it at Illinois and Michigan. The truth is we can’t really predict or control what inspires us. Many noble projects end up as boring exercises in style - much wiser to abandon before it reaches that point! Sufjan Stevens was described as a Freak Folk artist - along with other favourites of mine, like the Fleet Foxes and Joanna Newsom, but I’ve yet to understand what that term means - just seems a catagory for any music that doesn’t fit neatly into any other. The remarkable thing about this artist is the interplay between a huge sound (orchestra, chorus, crashing percussion) and the intimacy and simplicity of his vocals. Despite the broad canvas it evokes, it’s the detail of tracks like Chicago, Casimir Polaski Day - and John Wayne Gacy Jnr (about a serial killer), related to what is personally experienced- and personally felt, that affects so powerfully and hauntingly.