Illinois — 2005

Background

Illinois was released in 2005, the second installment in Sufjan Stevens's original, ultimately abandoned plan to record a concept album for every US state, built around densely orchestrated arrangements incorporating woodwinds, brass, strings and choral vocals alongside Stevens's own banjo and guitar playing, addressing Illinois history, geography and mythology across an unusually ambitious, wide-ranging tracklist.

Sound

'Chicago' opens the album with a sweeping, horn-and-string-laden arrangement that builds to one of Stevens's most anthemic choruses, its lyric addressing personal transformation against the city's backdrop. 'Casimir Pulaski Day' offers a much starker, more intimate moment, built around simple banjo and voice, addressing grief and religious doubt with unusual directness amid the album's otherwise maximalist orchestral scope.

Ambition and range

The album's song titles alone — often stretching to entire sentences — signal its maximalist, almost encyclopaedic ambition, addressing subjects ranging from a real-life serial killer ('John Wayne Gacy, Jr.') to UFO sightings to Superman, all woven into a genuinely coherent artistic whole despite the sprawling subject matter and unusually large ensemble arrangements.

Legacy

Illinois is widely regarded as Sufjan Stevens's finest and most ambitious album, its combination of orchestral maximalism and intimate, confessional songwriting having established him as one of the most significant and structurally ambitious songwriters of the 2000s indie folk scene. It remains the high point of his originally planned fifty-state project, which was ultimately abandoned after only two albums.