You know the story by now: over a decade ago, Sufjan Stevens released two state-themed concept albums (for Michigan and Illinois), promising to record 48 more to cover the entire USA. Stevens almost immediately abandoned those plans and wrote the promise off as a “promotional gimmick”. Those of you out there that were waiting for a tender, sensitive, banjo-plucked, vaguely spiritual album for Connecticut would seemingly have your hopes dashed. Well, dear reader, despair no more! Comedian Joey Clift crowdsourced the remaining 48 states earlier this year — as the coronavirus was shutting shit down — and you can hear the 10-song Connecticut album below for free.
The 10 songs are vastly different in tone, style, and recording quality. They’re all fittingly lo-fi, and many of them are hyper-specific, like “2 Skinnee J’s at Toad’s Place”, a spoken-word, stream-of-consciousness narrative about New Haven’s “Where Legends Play” venue. That track is completely unmastered, so you will literally need to crank your volume up to even hear it. The best of the bunch are wonderfully catchy (opener Becca Dean Biggs‘ “Empty Beach”) or specifically scathing (“Boola Boola [A Song of Privilege]”, that takes Yale to task for its hypocritical cocoon of money). I will warn you: not all of these artists are from Connecticut, so listen at your own peril. But hey, how often do you see people laugh with Connecticut instead of at Connecticut?
You can explore other states, too, along with several EPs, like one for Puerto Rico and Washington DC. “I get the joy of knowing I’m maybe annoying a moderately popular folk musician,” Clift wrote about the project. See? He gets it.
