Asthmatic Kitty announces the second installment of Sufjan Stevens' 50 State Project, llinois, a 22-track anthematic tone poem to The Prairie State. Following the 2003 collection of songs for his home state, "Michigan," Stevens presents an emphatic answer to the question: Can a songwriter express the spirit of a state he's never called home? With his most enterprising project to date - the result of extensive research, travel, meditation, and countless days and nights in the studio - admirers of his previous work and first time listeners will agree that the answer is yes.
On this second state tour, Sufjan weaves variegated musical styles (jazz, funk, pop) and instrumental textures (from oboe to church organ) into a tapestry of persons famous, infamous, and anonymous, and places iconic, obscure, and ghostly.The musical road trip takes you through ghost towns, grain mills, hospital rooms, and the City of Broad Shoulders, with guest appearances by a poet, a president, and a serial murderer, to name a few.

1. Concerning the UFO Sighting
2. Black Hawk War, The
3. Come On! Feel the Illinoise!
4. John Wayne Gacy, Jr.
5. Jacksonville
6. Short Reprise For Mary Todd, A
7. Decatur
8. One Last 'Woo-Hoo' For the Pullman
9. Chicago
10. Casimir Pulaski Day
11. To the Workers of the Rockford River Valley Region
12. Man of Metropolis, The
13. Prarie Fire That Wanders About
14. Conjunction of Drones, A
15. Predatory Wasp, The
16. They Are Night Zombies!! They Are Neighbors!!
17. Let's Hear That String Part Again...
18. In This Temple
19. Seer's Tower, The
20. Tallest Man, The Broadest Shoulders, The
21. Riffs and Variations on a Single Note
22. Out of Egypt