reviews at:

30 Music: http://www.30music.com/rev.php?rev=1232&mode=

Almost Cool: http://www.almostcool.org/mr/s/s168mu.html

Delusions of Adequacy: http://www.adequacy.net/review.php?reviewid=5551

Opus: http://www.opuszine.com/music/review.html?reviewID=879

Popmatters: http://popmatters.com/music/reviews/s/stevenssufjan-illinois.shtml

and Allmusic: http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:54j4eaz74xf7 (there was a written review up yesterday, but for some reason it is no longer there -- hopefully they're considering up-ing the rating, because four stars is much too low for such an achievement.)

those are all of the more high profile reviews i could find, but for more a google query of "sufjan"+"illinois"+"review" does a decent job.

in other news: has anyone heard about the delay of "illinois" release? i believe it's due to their use of superman on the front cover because if you go to the promotion site, the superman is removed from the cover.

i'm glad i got my copy early. now it's all illegal.

Thanks for those links, ighsoi.

I suppose a lot of people have already heard about this, but Pitchfork reported that Sufjan will be on NPR on Wednesday, July 6th. Apparently, he wrote a song just for this segment about the town where the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker was just rediscovered. It was thought to be extinct for decades. People had been claiming to site the bird for about the last 50 years, but they could never be confirmed and it remained something of a legend. It is the largest woodpecker in the world. The song he wrote is called "The Lord God Bird."I don't know about you, but I am pumped to hear it.

Okay..so what I need to do is get my Superman-copy of Illinois signed by Sufjan, then when Sufjan is a legend in 20 years, sell it on ebay.

Pitchforkmedia just gave the album 9.2 (their highest score of the year thus far).

http://pitchforkmedia.com/record-reviews/s/stevens_sufjan/illinois.shtml

stylus: http://www.stylusmagazine.com/review.php?ID=3155 (pretty poorly thought out).

tiny mix tapes: http://tinymixtapes.com/musicreviews/s/sufjan_stevens.htm

splendid: http://www.splendidmagazine.com/review.html?reviewid=11204460301797947

lost at sea: http://www.lostatsea.net/review.phtml?id=12552061942c932bb112c4

good marks all around, it seems!

quote:

Originally posted by ihgsoi:

in other news: has anyone heard about the delay of "illinois" release? i believe it's due to their use of superman on the front cover because if you go to the promotion site, the superman is removed from the cover.

i'm glad i got my copy early. now it's all illegal.

Here's Pitchfork's version of the story:

http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/news/05-07/05.shtml

I'll have to look for copies of it in stores...see if any record stores disobey the cease and desist.

I wonder how the town of Metropolis, Illinois (an interesting, if sorta pathetic, stop in the heart of Illinois) gets away with the constant use of Superman on its water towers and throughout the town. I wonder if Simon and Schuster get a kickback from the town...

I wonder how absurdly high a metascore Illinois will have. I guess we'll find out later today....definetely a 90+ candidate, and this one might actually stay there.

quote:

Originally posted by Bobthespirit:
I wonder how absurdly high a metascore Illinois will have. I guess we'll find out later today....definetely a 90+ candidate, and this one might actually stay there.

I stand by my prediction that Sufjan will have the high score for 2005. The ga-ga Pitchfork review clinches it, I'd say. I'm sure there's somebody out there who will want to take the record down a peg, but I don't see anything on the horizon that will bring more critical acclaim, unless there's some hip electronica or indie hip hop thing coming that I don't know or care about.

I don't think Metacritic uses print reviews from HARP magazine, but they have a rave review of Illinois in the August 2005 issue which ends with this statement: "Illinois establishes Stevens as one of our most talented auteurs; it's such a singular achievement that it little matters if another state ever follows."

I checked several stores in my area and found only one of the three to be selling the SS record. The clerk at that store said they received an email request to pull them from the shelves, but not a directive demanding they do so, and the store decided to sell them. The other two stores said they assented to the wishes of Stevens and his label.

A friend, who works at an distribution company that works many with indie labels, says that his stock of the record will be gone in a day or two, unprecedented for a record on such a small imprint. He thinks a lot of them will get "out there" but it may still have some value.

I bought an extra copy, to keep sealed, just in case.

The local Borders Books And Music had copies on display on a rack of new releases.

EDIT: Check out all the review sites. Superman flew off the JPEGs faster than a speeding bullet.

EDIT II: His next state album should be Idaho, and the full title should be "Girls Rock the Boise!" :LENO:

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Buck "Sweetie" McGuck,

quote:

Originally posted by Buck "Sweetie" McGuck:
The local Borders Books And Music had copies on display on a rack of new releases.

EDIT: Check out all the review sites. Superman flew off the JPEGs faster than a speeding bullet.

EDIT II: His next state album should be Idaho, and the full title should be "Girls Rock the Boise!" :LENO:

My local Borders didn't have it. But they're terrible about putting out new releases on Tuesdays. Maybe it's there now.

I noticed that the link to the Pitchfork story about the record is dead now...I wonder if there's been some change?

They originally ran a story that claimed that the released was being moved up to June 7th.

When that was proven false, they just yanked the story as if it never existed.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4721675

"the lord god bird"

excellent.

Did anyone read the Splendid review for Sufjan's Illinois? What an awful review. I feel like I'm a pretty smart guy, but I have no idea what that guy is talking about. It seems like he's trying to show off to me.

"At 22 tracks and 70-plus minutes, Stevens's second State Album is a microcosm of his grandiose vision -- and the problems existent thus far in his oeuvre. What begins as the exploration of an aesthetic via storytelling swells into a series of directives and statements of purpose, all the while remaining blind to its ironies and central tension."

Showing off what? That he has a thesaurus, overuses it, and can't quite manage to form a coherent thought? I think he shares Alanis Morisette's definition of "ironic," too, because I don't see what's so ironic about Illinois. Maybe I wasn't paying attention.

Hmm...I think the idea that anybody who uses big words *must* be pretentious a little shallowly anti-intellectual.

I use big words sometimes too, but it's because when I'm forming my statement, those are the words that pop into my head. I don't use them to show off that I know big words.

And it's a little shallow to assume that Sufjan Stevens (Or The Decemberists for that matter) are being pretentious just because they know what 'lithe largess' means.

I just read that quote from leland two posts above, so I don't know about the rest of the review, but based on that, I'd have to say that the reviewer, at least in that quote, agrees with leland. Although it does seem open to many interpretations, I believe the reviewer was implying that by being "blind to [storytelling's] ironies", the album and/or Stevens was/were being NON-ironic. I think he's implying that Stevens is TOO earnest TOO often. I think he means that if Stevens were a bit more "ironic" in some of his songs, then the album, and the "grandiose" story being told, would have more "tension". I don't really care what the guy thinks, but I believe that's what that quote means.

quote:

Originally posted by Bobthespirit:
Hmm...I think the idea that anybody who uses big words *must* be pretentious a little shallowly anti-intellectual.

Nobody implied this. I have no problem with "big words;" every word has its perfect fit somewhere. It's within reason to assume someone's mining the thesaurus when the sentence structure is as weak as the thought behind it. "...A microcosm of his grandiose vision -- and the problems existent thus far in his oeuvre" means what? Illinois is a microcosm of the problems in his discog? Or that its length is representative of those problems? The writer is masking his inadequacies at rhythm and metaphor (and penchant for dangling modifiers) with "woooo" words like oeuvre.

And I hate double hyphens for em dashes.

Good writers, whether they use big words or not, write so that the reader can understand what he's talking about. The purpose of writing is to get across some kind of information. The guy who wrote that article seemed like he was purposefully using abstruse language to seem profound. How fitting is it that Sufjan often talks in interviews about how meaningless abstract concepts are and how important details and specifics are?

Completely agree, Bro.