I’ll admit it: I wasn’t always the biggest Sufjan Stevens fan.

When I first heard Illinois, I found it to be bloated and annoyingly festive, even for my rich taste. I didn’t bother to follow up much after that, conceding that he was “talented, but not for me.” I did give a passing listen to The Age of Adz – mostly out of a desire to see what all the fuss was about – but then too, the man’s compositions felt insane and I just couldn’t relate to any of it. Perhaps I was simply lacking context. Or maybe I’ve just lost my mind over the years.

Either way, Sufjan gradually (even begrudgingly) became a mainstay within my musical collection.

It all started on a boring, hot summer afternoon in 2010. The air conditioner blasting on high, I sat in my bedroom idly staring out the window. I had just finished up school, and with no friends around me the world just felt colorless and I couldn’t shake this sensation that it was slipping away from me. I had Facebook chat open in the corner of my monitor, pathetically awaiting social interaction, but nobody obliged. Cooped up in my parents’ house, it seemed like I was squandering the best years of my life. So yeah, it was depressing times and all that shit. Anyway, I specifically recall b