#239 (of 365) "Come on! Feel the Illinoise" Sufjan Stevens

The title to this song is actually longer than that, but I don't have the energy to write it out. It's from the ever-pretentious but once beloved Sufjan Stevens in the 2nd of his "50 states" opus that never got past Illinois. Sufjan, aka "Surfer Jan" from the long lost Vague Space blog I used to run in the 2000s, was a great artist, telling intricate, elaborate, and often personal stories in the amazing Greetings from Michigan and then in my favorite album of 2005, the more simply named Illinois. (Seven Swans was also released around this time). Then for about a decade, the most prolific musician in recent memory kind of stopped releasing music. He famously had writers' block--or maybe I'm just assuming he did--and it wasn't until Carrie & Lowell in 2015 that he released anything even approximating the brilliance of Illinois again (not withstanding Avalanche, a strong album of Illinois outtakes from 2006). Yes, he hit some high heights again on the soundtrack to Call Me By Your Name but at least for me, in my musical tastes, I don't really listen to Sufjan much anymore. So I was surprised that this is the first of 5 songs that ended up on this countdown, proving the brilliance of these early "50 States" era songs and their timeless beauty. I still remember first hearing Illinois, in its entirety, a 22-song epic collection of true majesty, and wondering how someone could be so audacious and yet have it sound so good. Could he have used an editor back then? Was the 19-second track "A Conjunction of Drones Simulating the Way in Which Sufjan Stevens Has an Existential Crisis in the Great Godfrey Maze" worthy of inclusion? Well, no. But I count at 11 or 12 incredible tracks, three of which made this countdown, including this one, song 3 on the collection.

"Come On! Feel the Illinoise (Part I: "The World's Columbian Exposition" / Part II: "Carl Sandburg Visits Me in a Dream")​" - Sufjan Stevens // Illinois (2005)