In the lead for album of the year, at this point, is Sufjan Steven Illinois which is nothing short of a beautiful, insightful, and entertaining masterpiece. I know that there are not enough people out there who have heard of Sufjan. In fact, I'm sure that you are currently scratching your head.
Stop scratching your head and buy the album.
Pitchfork Media has this to say:
Illinois is less about place than spirit. Stevens dutifully celebrates and indicts all the appropriate landmarks, isolating the highest and lowest points in Illinois history, but at its best, the album makes America feel very small and very real: A boy crying in a van, a girl with bone cancer, stepmothers, parades, bandstands, presidents, UFOs, cream of wheat, trains after dark, a serial killer, Bible study.
They ended up giving the album a 9ish out of 10.
Which is only confirmed by the metacritic collection of reviews for Illinois.
I know that you're almost convinced to spend those 10 or 12 dollars, but I'm going to offer one final bit of persuasion. The AV Club at the Onion usually has some of the better entertainment reviews out there, so it was no surprise that they gave a marque treatment to Sufjan this week. In fact, they offer little but praise for the album:
It's easy to play a spot-the-Illinois-reference game, but it's just as easy to step back and marvel at the songs' musical range and sophistication. With a big background chorus and a band of friends armed with trumpets and strings they can actually play, Illinois drifts through songs and suites without ever stumbling or stomping the same tracks. Some of the choral treatments trade in regressively twee communalism, but Illinois marks a highly developed highpoint for an artist whose maturation from here on out should be a wonder to hear.
Likewise, I am so confident that you will like the album, that I will get a beer for you if you don't like it. Just meet me at the neighborhood bar after I float the actual bar exam, and we can cheer ourselves up over a couple pints. You for having spend money on an album that you didn't like, and I for more tangible reasons. However, I don't think you'll need that beer.
