Rise

Format

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  AKR014LP-C22 x Long Player  £25.00

Label

Asthmatic Kitty

Sufjan Stevens

Illinois (Special 10th Anniversary Blue Marvel Edition)

Like the self-proclaimed 'Spiderman' who climbed Chicago's sears tower with no harness, Sufjan Stevens scales dusty prairies, steel factories, and two hundred years of history in the second installment of his 50 state project, 'Illinois', a 22-track anthematic tone poem to the prairie state. an engrossing musical road trip, Illinois takes you through ghost towns, grain mills, hospital rooms, and the city of broad shoulders, with guest appearances by a poet, a president, a serial murderer, ufo's, superman, the goat that cursed the cubs, and decatur's famous chickenmobile. Sufjan weaves variegated musical styles (jazz, funk, pop, folk, and rodgers and hammerstein-like flourishes) and the textures of 25 instruments into a tapestry of persons and places famous, infamous, iconic and anonymous. invoking the muse of poet Carl Sandburg, 'Illinois' ushers in trumpets on parade, string quartets, female choruses and ambient piano scales arranged around Stevens' emerging falsetto.

Tracklist

• 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 till 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 Step-Mother!
  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, and it involves an inner tube, bath mats, and 21 able-bodied men
  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