Sufjan Stevens’ ‘Illinois’ could be this year’s best CD

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Editor’s Note: In Sound Advice, the first Friday of every month, veteran BDN entertainment writer Dale McGarrigle and former British music-press writer Adam Corrigan, and a revolving stable of BDN writers review new albums from across the musical spectrum.

“Illinois” (Asthmatic Kitty) – Sufjan Stevens

Sufjan Stevens, in the second installment of his ridiculously ambitious 50 states project (he’s writing an album for every state in the union), is a contender for the best album of 2005.

“Illinois” heads south from the territory mined in his first 50 states album, “Michigan,” to explore the Prairie State. Twenty tracks and 74 minutes later, we have an album as lush and intricate as “Pet Sounds,” as spiritually dense as Dylan, and as big-hearted, hopeful and warm as Walt Whitman. And it sure makes you think Illinois is one hell of a place to be.

Employing an army of musicians, Stevens doesn’t try to pare down his message. Less skilled songwriters would collapse under the weight of the instrumentation and lyrical content, but Stevens’ arms are big enough to welcome in everything from armies of the undead to glockenspiel.

Songs like “John Wayne Gacy, Jr.” and “Casimir Pulaski Day” tackle the stories of the serial killer, and of a kid watching his friend die of cancer, respectively. Both are devastatingly simple, backed only by guitar, banjo and a choir of female voices. Conversely, raveups like “Man of Metropolis Steals Our Hearts” rock out with unabashed earnestness. Stevens’ Christian faith, while present, is never a preachy distraction. His quiet spirituality is part of his charm.

Sufjan Stevens is as American as you can get. He’s both a throwback to ’60’s folk like Crosby Stills and Nash and the Band, and is a true product of his time. In a country consumed by both Paris Hilton and nasty political punditry, Stevens stands out as a welcome alternative to irony and anger. – Emily Burnham

“Moonlight Serenade” (Columbia Records) – Carly Simon

Nothing is wrong in reinventing gorgeous standards. Many have done it with panache: Tony Bennett, Michael Feinstein, Diana Krall. So has Carly Simon.

Just not this time.

Simon collaborated with producer Richard Perry, who has been working with Rod Stewart. I decidedly disliked Stewart’s last standards offering, but I had high hopes for Simon because this is her fourth outing with standards, many of which she has performed memorably.

On the liner notes to “Moonlight Serenade,” Simon writes that when Perry pitched the idea, she agreed it was a great notion, “knowing I didn’t have the time to do a whole 10, 11 or 12 songs.”

That may not have been a confession she should have made.

On “Moonlight Serenade,” what’s amiss is neither the lyrics nor the melodies, which come from the likes of Cole Porter, Glenn Miller, George and Ira Gershwin, Oscar Hammerstein II, Jerome Kern, Lorenz Hart and Richard Rodgers. With that lineup, how can it go wrong?

But it does. Rhythm, tone and expression vary little from one love song to the next. And these songs cover the gamut of love: The title track, “Moonlight Serenade,” is a song of sweet innocence, while “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” is its edgier opposite. Somehow Simon’s rendition feels the same. And listening to “In the Still of the Night,” that Cole Porter powerhouse of longing and confession, I actually felt like I was jaunting along on horseback because of the orchestration’s tempo, which overpowered Simon’s soft vocals.

Overall, it’s as if Simon is singing by rote – or time constraints. And I am not sure the “synth strings” played on most tracks give it anything more than a canned elevator music feel. One would think they could spring for a real violin or two.

Sadly, “Moonlight Serenade” is just another tepid collection of songs better sung years ago. – Janine Pineo

“Sea Fever” (Warner Bros.) – William Topley

“Sea Fever” is not the great epic, bleeding weariness, loneliness and deep emotion, that it badly wants to be. Seven years after leaving his band The Blessing behind him, British bluesman William Topley seems afflicted by the same sort of grandiose visions and humorlessness that ruined Simple Minds and Sting. Subsequently “Sea Fever” ends up as generally overblown B-rated barroom blues that is the sonic equivalent of a distant gaze and a wind machine.

Even a healthy dollop of Mark Knopfler – who guests on the title track, and probably shouldn’t be getting involved in this kind of thing – fails to alleviate the po-faced atmosphere that permeates the record.

That Topley has a reasonable voice is beyond doubt; however, he frequently seems to confuse using a portentous baritone with soulfulness as he struggles to convey the weight of his stories of street life, whiskey bars, and broken hearts.

Clearly he would like nothing more than to be Van Morrison. But Van, after 14 years in the business, had written some of the greatest songs of his era. At the same stage of Topley’s career, I can’t hum a single one of his tunes, even moments after the CD ends. – Adam Corrigan

“Aperitif for Destruction” (Surfdog) – Richard Cheese

Who says they don’t make ’em like they used to?

Richard Cheese does. Well, sort of.

Cheese, accompanied by his Lounge Against the Machine band, takes modern and classic metal, rap and rock hits and “swankifies” them, performing them in a Vegas style that would have been perfectly at home in the Rat Pack era.

Cheese and his bandmates, Bobby Ricotta, Gordon Brie and Buddy Gouda, have perfected this formula on this, their fourth album, playing short parodies in a straight-faced style that is simply hilarious.

There are certainly some head-shaking, “that’s-just-wrong” moments, such as his duet with a Stephen Hawking impersonator on the Paul McCartney-Michael Jackson chestnut “The Girl is Mine.” Still, U2’s “Sunday Bloody Sunday” as a mambo? A version of Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” that includes sections of the ’50s pop song “Mister Sandman”? The Killers’ “Somebody Told Me” as a lushy torch song? I mean, how can you go wrong?

Another advantage, for better or worse, is that the listener can finally understand those lyrics he or she could never quite catch before. Now you can finally hear what all the outrage was about with 2 Live Crew’s “Me So Horny.”

Still, there’s a lot more hits than misses on “Aperitif for Destruction,” so there won’t be many whines with this Cheese. – Dale McGarrigle