last week's jams:

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Best Week Ever
Gizmodo
Brooklyn Vegan
You Ain't No Picasso
Music (For Robots)
videos.antville.org

the musical excitement never seems to end.
Sufjan Stevens announced the tracklist for Illinois, the second in his series of albums about the 50 states which i doubt will continue past five.

Sufjan at CMJ last fall. Photo stolen from Stereogum

while i thought Seven Swans was very pretty, Michigan: The Great Lakes State is one of the most beautiful good-cry-inspiring albums i've heard in recent years, so more in the series excites me, even if i am even less familiar with Illinios than i am with Michigan (Sufjan lives in New York, doesn't he? i'm hoping that album will come before he retires the project.)

compare tracklists:

Illinois:
01 Concerning the UFO Sighting Near Highland, IL
02 The Black Hawk War, or, How to Demolish an Entire Civilization and Still Feel Good About Yourself in the Morning, or, We Apologize for the Inconvenience But You're Going to Have to Leave Now, or, "I have fought the Big Knives and will continue to fight them until they are off our lands!"
03 Come on! Feel the Illinoise!
-Part I: The World's Columbian Exposition
-Part II: Carl Sandburg Visits Me in a Dream
04 John Wayne Gacy, Jr.
05 Jacksonville
06 A Short Reprise for Mary Todd, Who Went Insane, But for Very Good Reasons
07 Decatur, or, Round of Applause for Your Step Mother!
08 One Last "Woo-hoo!" for the Pullman
09 Chicago
10 Casimir Pulaski Day
11 To the Workers of the Rockford River Valley Region, I have an Idea Concerning Your Predicament, and it involves shoe string, a lavender garland, and twelve strong women
12 The Man of Metropolis Steals Our Hearts
13 Prairie Fire That Wanders About
14 A Conjunction of Drones Simulating the Way in Which Sufjan Stevens Has an Existential Crisis in the Great Godfrey Maze
15 The Predatory Wasp of the Palisades Is Out to Get Us!
16 They Are Night Zombies!! They Are Neighbors!! They Have Come Back From the Dead!! Ahhhhh!
17 Let's Hear That String Part Again, Because I Don't Think They Heard It All the Way Out in Bushnell
18 In This Temple, as in the Hearts of Man, for Whom He Saved the Earth
19 The Seer's Tower
20 The Tallest Man, the Broadest Shoulders
-Part I: The Great Frontier
-Part II: Come to Me Only With Playthings Now
21 Riffs and Variations on a Single Note for Jelly Roll, Earl Hines, Louis Armstrong, Baby Dodds, and the King of Swing, to Name a Few
22 Out of Egypt, into the Great Laugh of Mankind, and I shake the dirt from my sandals as I run

Michigan
1 Flint (For The Unemployed And Underpaid)
2 All Good Naysayers, Speak Up! Or Forever Hold Your Peace!
3 For The Widows In Paradise, For The Fatherless In Ypsilanti
4 Say Yes! To M!Ch!Gan!
5 The Upper Peninsula
6 Tahquamenon Falls
7 Holland
8 Detroit, Lift Up Your Weary Head! (Rebuild! Restore! Reconsider!)
9 Romulus
10 Alanson, Crooked River
11 Sleeping Bear, Sault Saint Marie
12 They Also Mourn Who Do Not Wear Black (For The Homeless In Muskegon)
13 Oh God, Where Are You Now? (In Pickeral Lake? Pigeon? Marquette? Mackinaw?)
14 Redford (For Yia-Yia & Pappou)
15 Vito's Ordination Song


its safe to say from that fairly longwinded tracklist and from an estimated running length of 74 minutes that Pitchfork is right to call Illinois "epic."

july.