2000 Great Songs #1507: Chicago
Sufjan Stevens has built a fairly broad catalog, so it feels like I'm selling the guy short by just picking songs off 2005's Come On Feel The Illinoise . But, frankly, I don't listen to much of his music beyond this record (and sometimes its 2003 counterpart Michigan ). Like the previously-discussed title track , "Chicago" is something of an epic, an extended suite that sounds like it was written for an over-the-top-yet-still-earnest high school musical. Title aside, it's much less geographically specific than the balance of the album, my titular hometown serving as one of the many characters the theatrical narrators meet along the way. It's more of that crazy, almost proggy orchestrated bombast that makes the record so aurally striking, but at heart its a lovely little folk song that would've worked just as well as a solo acoustic Elliott Smith -conjuring song. (As confirmed when the stripped-down demo was later released on 2006's The Avalanche ....
