SUFJAN STEVENS’ ILLINOIS DESERVEDLY GOES GOLD
On Thursday, the Recording Industry Association of America announced that Sufjan Stevens’ 2005 LP Illinois has been certified as a gold record. Back in dinosaur times this designation used to mean that 500,000 physical copies of a record had been sold — which made the system relatively easy for retailers to defraud. In 2017, the definition of “500,000 units” is more nebulous, involving accumulated transfers of binary information through the mysterious nöosphere in which we are all swaddled. But allegedly the RIAA certification is harder to game than it used to be.
As a Sufjan fan I didn’t have the patience to investigate the technical details. I choose, in the spirit of Sufjan Stevens himself, to accept the assertion on faith: that Illinois has, with the passage of years, become a legitimate hit record.
This must be one of the most charming surprises of the ages. One likes to imagine that there is, or could be, a world in which artists like Sufjan are all big stars: a world in which the production of popular music remained capable of delicateness, in which radio hits remained capable of expressing a range of emotions, in which songcraft and improvisation were in cosmic balance.
But, behold — Illinois is a hit record! It turns out we don’t have to look through a telescope to find that other, softer world. It is here, nested invisibly within our noisy sonic environment. Sufjan Nation celebrates!
You never can tell who will turn out to belong to the Sufjan cult. I’m an old fart, but the music of my late teens was all prog- flavoured folk anyway. Stevens, with his taste for angular, jazzy solos on various stringed instruments, was already like an old friend when I first heard the Seven Swans LP ( 2004). When he wandered down electronic and symphonic side roads with later recordings, I was prepared for that, even if I didn’t always like the results. He likes to release multiple versions of the same song — Illinois, as an album, is not really thinkable now without its equally strong Volume II of “outtakes and extras,” The Avalanche — and the rule seems to be that I generally like all of them.
I was even ready to forgive his Division III- quarterback good looks, which are definitely a new wrinkle in the prog- folk equation. Musically, Sufjan Stevens can be thought of as the offspring of a large, multi- generational, and undeniably unsightly crowd. You would think, listening to his records, that he showed up nine months after an orgy in which Robert Fripp joined Jethro Tull and they collided with the Polyphonic Spree. ( While Lou Barlow watched.) He has no right to look so all- American, even if he subverts his appearance on stage by wearing reflective neon outfits and Halloweeny plastic wings.
Like a surprising number of creative geniuses, he was born into what is politely called a New Religious Movement— a Baha’i- esque group called Subud. As an adult he is a publicly unclassified but undoubtedly serious Christian, and his songs speak in a sort of midwestern/Lutheran language of theological crisis: anguish, abandonment, doubt, resentment. The highlights of Illinois include songs that could be described as spiritual exercises: “John Wayne Gacy, Jr.,” in which we are asked to consider and accept our likeness to a loathsome serial killer, and “Casimir Pulaski Day,” an evocative vignette that functions as a believer’s alternative to XTC’s “Dear God.”
Sufjan followed his weird upbringing with a weird education, and he did not learn the guitar until he was in college.
As a musician his mother tongue seems to be the woodwind family. In short, he is a naturally countercultural performer in a myriad of ways. The fearless, endless defiance of expectations that one finds in his music may not involve personal courage at all: he is maybe just a weird band-camp kid with a Muslim-sounding name and an Ivy League- flavoured sense of humour.
I can’t help returning over and over to the miracle, and feel almost helpless to expound further upon it: THIS guy got a gold record. Perhaps this phenomenon would have seemed quite natural in 1972 or thereabouts, when album liners could have “claghorn” credits and pop stars were holding a giant, decade- long contest to see who could become the most extreme religious outsider. Sufjan samples from the tradition of what we now consider to be “classic rock,” as an intellectual rather than a vulgar imitator. If you liked Led Zep at 16 you should adore Sufjan Stevens at 46: I know I do.
THIS MUST BE ONE OF THE MOST CHARMING SURPRISES OF THE AGE.