I like the sunday cleaning thing because I can trust you that this band I haven’t heard of is probably worth hearing. just don’t end up like You Ain’t no Picasso and feature all these lame twee/pop bands with all stupid style and no substance.

Brad O., a thoughtful comment, but I think there’s a generational gap at hand with regards to reviewers’ lack of mention of the experimental music artists(spec. Phillip Glass) you mentioned above in relation to Sufjan Stevens’ music. My assumption is that many reviewers today are fairly young(between 25 and 35 years of age) and aren’t familiar with experimental music. I think that’s the reason for much of the homogenity in tastes in indie rock circles; the 25 to 35 year old music fan’s(including myself) frame of reference is relatively limited.

I figured the generation gap was certainly part of the issue with many reviewers not quite understanding where Stevens work grew from. (PF’s review is one example.)

CDReviews on the other hand did mention Philip Glass and eluded to the experimental pop art-rock genre that disappeared from the public eye in early ninties.

Stevens stuff is quite outstanding in the aspect that there simply are very few artists/composers working in this arena today.

What will happen I think is that Stevens will quickly be absorbed by the mainstream media and will find that soundtrack and producing work will quickly take up his talent and probably be just as rewarding creativly in addition to being more lucrative.

Sad for those of us who really enjoy his take on indie pop music but it is likley that once he is given a huge budget with insane resources found in big media and as much creative license to create we will see him more in the sound-track bin and in liner notes as producer in the future.

I agree it is a beautiful record.

The music generation gap is something I run into all the time. (comes from being a geezer that likes new music) I wish that more people of my generation still retained the same enthusiasim for music as they had when they were in their twenties. Trying to get people beyond the age of 30 to a show of new original music is like pulling teeth with rusty pliars.

What we are seeing is really the first "Rock and Roll" generation gap. Late boomers (’62) like myself were the first generation to grow up listening to album rock and we are jaded with this soundtrack that has been playing into our heads for over 40 years. (It never goes away….GAAAAAA!!)

One thing for certain music is more interesting than it ever has been…..Thanks to cheap digital technology to a savvy younger generation that has great communications skills and tools like no other generation had before.

Sometimes I get a little down wishing that what I have available to me at this stage in my music career was there at the beginning. But…in some ways I do…I get to follow my daughter’s progress and hope that someday my generation stops watching TV and really listens to music for a change. (we are really just plain lazy)

Keeping that fresh viewpoint gets harder and harder the older one gets as everything starts cycling back onto itself. So I am glad that you guys are here.

thanks for the banter.

p.s. Frank you said "record"…

Chiming in… While I think the Phillip Glass comparison is quite apt, I think Spin got it right in citing Glass’s composer contemporary John Adams. "Stevens sounds as informed by middle-American community theater, church choirs, and John Adams’ American operas as any canonical "folk rock" it may resemble. [Jul 2005, p.102]" (via Metacritic).

Though many of the songs on Illinoise resemble the work of modern minimalist classical composers like John Adams or Phillip Glass, Sufjan’s made them more "pop." I’d still hesitate to send an Illinoise fan off to listen to the John Adams opera "I was looking at the ceiling and then I saw the sky" because, well, it’s still opera, (and still classical music) but they’d definitely hear some of those Sufjan moments.

The same argument could be made that early Phillip Glass classical drone experiments of the 60’s were an influence on the Velvet Underground — heck, they both hung out in the same New York lofts, but it’s a rarely discussed connection. Mostly because classical music is listened to by older classical music fans and indie pop/rock by indie kids. Never the twain shall meet.

Still, I’m glad Sufjan has found a rich treasury of music to mine… and he’s used it to create a beautiful new pop sound. And it did prompt me to (if only briefly) dig out some of my modern classical music recordings for re-listening.