Includes Digital Download
Sufjan Stevens, Asthmatic Kitty, and Soundsfamilyre announce Sufjan's third full-length album, a collection of songs for his birth-state, MICHIGAN, "The Great Lake State."
Composed as a geographical tone poem, MICHIGAN follows a metaphysical expedition through the idiosyncrasies of middle America. Drawing from personal anecdote, regional history, and state heritage, Stevens mixes social and political grievances with songs about snowmobiles, Henry Ford, the Detroit race riots, and love.
MICHIGAN's songs resonate with a range of sources-Vince Guaraldi, Terry Riley, and Nick Drake as accompanied by Stereolab and The Sea & Cake-in executing Stevens' peculiar palette that is simultaneously rock and blue-grass, jazz and pop, a style The Village Voice appraises as "Arthur Lee meets the Book of Psalms."
In MICHIGAN, Stevens combines intimate, soft-spoken songwriting with the dense compositional complexity displayed on his previous release ENJOY YOUR
RABBIT, which XLR8R called "...a transgressive, majestic album conjuring an academic jam session of Stereolab and Luke Vibert conducted by Steve Reich."
Guest artists include Elin, Megan, and Daniel Smith (of The Danielson Famile), and John Ringhofer (Half-handed Butt). Album art features original hand-paintings by Martha Stewart crafts editor Laura Normandin.
MICHIGAN is the inaugural entry of THE 50 STATES, a cumulative recording project by Sufjan Stevens unparalleled in its panoramic enterprise: a record for each state! You think he's kidding, don't you?
Now available from Asthmatic Kitty and Soundsfamilyre. Distributed by Secretly Canadian: release date: July 1, 2003 (which happened to be Sufjan's birthday).
Track Listing:
1 Flint (For the Unemployed and Underpaid) 03:43
2 All Good Naysayers, Speak Up! Or Forever Hold Your Peace! 04:33
3 For the Widows in Paradise, For the Fatherless in Ypsilanti 03:57
4 Say Yes! to M!ch!gan! 02:45
5 The Upper Peninsula 03:23
6 Tahquamenon Falls 02:18
7 Holland 03:26
8 Detroit, Lift Up Your Weary Head! (Rebuild! Restore! Reconsider!) 08:20
9 Romulus 04:41
10 Alanson, Crooked River 01:18
11 Sleeping Bear, Sault Saint Marie 02:52
12 They Also Mourn Who Do Not Wear Black (For the Homeless in Muskegon) 06:21
13 Oh God, Where Are You Now? (In Pickeral Lake? Pigeon? Marquette? Mackinaw?) 09:23
14 Redford (For Yia-Yia & Pappou) 02:02
15 Vito's Ordination Song 07:06
