Sufjan Stevens - Illinoise

A few years back, Detroit-born folkie Sufjan Stevens declared his intention to write and record an album for each American state. Illinoise (subtitled Come On Feel The Illinoise) is the second release in this series, following 2003's Greeings From Michigan: The Great Lakes State, the singer's triumphant ode to his native state.

In lesser hands, this nomadic musicology would undoubtedly lapse into gimmick-ridden irony or, worse still, an exercise in kitsch. Stevens, though, is blessed with a prodigious talent for storytelling, and it is this narrative prowess that sets his work apart from run-of-the-mill Americana. Inspired by fellow inquisitive spirits like Walt Whitman and William Faulkner, Stevens inhabits his songs as if each one was his childhood home - his research methods are rumoured to give new meaning to the word meticulous - without ever resorting to cheap nostalgia.

Illinois brilliantly exploits that middle ground between the personal and the universal, so that even the likes of tear-stained cancer ballad 'Casimir Pulaski Day' never quite descend into outright sentimentality. More impressive still is that, although the album is imbued with an unmistakably evangelical tone (an ever-present characteristic, it seems, of Stevens' output), it manages to avoid coming across as explicitly preachy or conservative. Meanwhile, Stevens' fascination with American iconography illuminates proceedings throughout, as he pays heartfelt tribute to, among other Illinois natives, Superman, serial killer John Wayne Gacy Jr. and Abraham Lincoln's tragic widow, Mary Todd .

The record's musical scope is every bit as audacious as its narrative sweep: across some twenty-two tracks, we are treated to marching band flourishes, back-porch torch songs and cheerleader backing vocals. On the title track, a Greek chorus - dubbed 'the Illinoisemakers' - delivers something akin to a self-addressed memo of 'Are you writing from the heart?'. Stevens most certainly is, which is why people will still be listening to Illinois in forty years' time.