Sufjan Stevens is a banjo playing dork who thought it'd be fun to release an album for every state in the best country ever (Canada), but since he's a failure switched to the US because Canada has provinces and he didn't realize that. So he did one about Michigan that was about depressing as their football team this season. Then he decided to go off and "research" about my fair state. Well listen here, I don't need no banjo playing, wing wearing fool telling me the history of my fair state.
Furthermore, I read an interview in rolling stone a few years back that he didn't own any instruments. His attempts at being vague and appearing as a compositional pop genius irritate me and make me want to burn copies of his "Seven Swans" album in a fire.
Let's talk about the album now:
There's 22 songs.
7 of them are little instrumental ditties that have NO LYRICS about Illinois. They are 2 minutes or less.
Another 7 are less than 5 minutes and are nice, but don't have much more substance than some swelling flute sounds and backing vocals that go "ahhhhhh" like some bad eno ambient album.
The other 8 are 5 to 7 minutes long that are OK but some of which are COMPLETELY INTERCHANGEABLE!
Like "The Tallest Man" and "Come On Feel the Illinoise" are pretty much the same song! "Man of Metropolis" is 6 minutes of a noisy pop deal that Rogue Wave does better. "Casmir Pulaski Day" sounds nothing like the Big Black song and "Chicago" is a 6 minute song that was in "Little Miss Sunshine" which was OK. But throughout the album, Soof is just reusing the same ideas over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again.
Furthermore, his facts are all wrong. For example, John Wayne Gacy did not kill 10,000 or 27 people. It was 33. And I can't figure out if he's being silly or what, but I don't know, I can't take it seriously and its a weak track on the album. Also, for that track "Concerning the UFO sighting near highland, IL", I remember when that happened. Why does he have to turn it into a song about God? And what's the point of talking about the wasp of palisades when everyone knows that the real problem are the cicadas that come every 17 years.
And regarding "The Seer's Tower", I can say that Fazlur Khan as no record online of being beat by his father as the song would make you think he was.
Lastly, how bout that last track that starts of like "Golden Hours" by Eno, but turns into some Reich sounding jam! WhooO! Because that's what I want, 5 minutes of Reich music after 68 minutes of the same songs over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again.
I do like some songs, and his voice is quite soothing.
To be honest, I did enjoy this much more my sophmore year of high school when kim burned it for me, but, since then, I don't know, I just feel that it is highly repetitive, the snippets are kinda useless (and don't give me wrong, I love snippets! your GBV and TFUL282 snippets rev my engine, but the DON'T belong in the newsroom), and well, there's just better music to listen to, like the next band! If I wanted to keep listening to Soof, I'd probably just pull out my old Bright Eyes albums from junior high and rock out to that as well...
OVERALL RATING - thanksgiving leftovers
KEY TRACKS - Wasps of Palisades..., Tallest Man..., Man of Metropolis...
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