MUSIC: Sufjan Stevens

So apparently Sufjan Stevens is releasing the rest of the songs he had originally worked up for his Illinois album. A couple of other excellent blogs, Good Weather for Airstrikes and I Guess I'm Floating have some tracks up from that plus a good discussion about the motivation behind a whole new album for Illinoise-esque material. Cruise on over to see what all the noise is about.

This is also as good a moment as any to post the song Sufjan did for NPR during the middle of last year (Excellent article on the NPR website). The short end of it is that he wrote a song about a rare bird found in Brinkley, Arkansas, allowing NPR to follow him throughout the songwriting process. Here's the track and the NPR story.

::: Sufjan Stevens - Lord God Bird
::: Sufjan Stevens - Lord God Bird (NPR Story)

Since we all know of his lofty goal to record an album for each of the 50 states in the USA, I figure the next one might as well be Arkansas since he's already got one song out of the way. Plenty of good material available (Little Rock race riots, Bill Clinton, etc.) and it would be interesting to see how Sufjan handles a state out of the midwest. Just a thought, I'd be interested in hearing what all you guys are thinking (or hoping) as well.......