I learned something tonight. If you are ever planning on spending four hours standing in a hot, steamy club listening to a couple of bands it is probably not in your best interest to put three and a half miles on the treadmill immediately before attending said concert. Let’s just say my legs are aching right now and I really, really need to rehydrate.
But I am in no way complaining about my workout this afternoon, since it has resulted in my meeting my first weight loss goal. Yes, for the first time in, oh, probably two years, I am back under two hundred pounds. That’s fifteen pounds since the start of the year and while I originally was hoping to be under two hundred by St. Patrick’s Day I’ll take what I can get. I’m still officially overweight and I am certainly going to keep this going until I knock off another ten or fifteen pounds (current goal is ten pounds in the next ten weeks) but it sure is nice to have my jeans actually fit again. And I don’t get winded walking up a few flights of stairs, though that was mainly due to my being horribly out of shape as opposed to the weight that I was carrying.
Time to switch gears. It probably doesn’t surprise anyone that I read several music magazines. I’m not talking about Spin or Rolling Stone, the latter of which is written and read by people who know nothing about music. I’m talking about the seemingly printed out of someone’s basement, written by the record store staff type of magazine. Well, since last fall I’ve read and had a lot of people tell me that I had to listen to Sufjan Stevens’ “Illinois”. Then I heard a lot of people call it the best album of the year. Last week I finally succumbed to the peer pressure and picked it up and listened to it. And…
I don’t know if it is the album of the year. It might be the album of the decade. And there is a thirty minute stretch in there that might be the best thirty minutes that I’ve ever heard.
Let me explain. One of my rules of knowing a really good album is that I’ll listen to a song and then immediately replay it because it was so good. Occasionally, I won’t even wait for the song to finish, I’ll replay it just so I can fully appreciate it. Well, I did that on three or four songs in a row on Illinois. I think I listened to the song Chicago five times in a row and it just kept getting better every time. Given that I was at work while listening to it I was sitting there stunned that I could be listening to something so good while sitting in a cubicle.
It’s a concept album in that all of the songs are about Illinois. Like most concept pieces, the theme is really the least important part of the package. Yes, it helps if you know that there is a city called Metropolis or that Casmir Pulaski Day is a Chicago holiday but the songs that carry those names have nothing to do with the place or the event. It’s just a backdrop for the story to take place. Musically, it is this intricate orchestration with a string section interacting with a banjo and an occasional mournful trumpet. Often you have a choir of background vocals acting like a Greek chorus. The biggest comparison that I can make is to The Polyphonic Spree, which consists of thirty musicians playing every instrument that you could think of. But the Spree are more of a hippie commune singing about the sun while Sufjan is singing about life.
Basically, what I am saying is that you really need to pick up this disc. I’ll warn you that it is addictive, you will listen to it for days on end and will constantly want to replay songs. Then the songs will stay in your head as you try to go to sleep. But, you need to hear this music. It really is unlike anything else you could find in the mainstream.
The five random CDs of the week:
1) The Waco Brothers “Cowboy in Flames”
2) Son Volt “Trace”
3) Son Volt “Straightaways”
4) They Might Be Giants “Flood”
5) The Subdudes “The Subdudes”
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