"What? This isn't the Beck show?" we heard a guy ahead of us in line cry out in the Great American ticket line last night. Nope, the sold-out show was for quirky folkster Sufjan Stevens, who's touring on the second of his albums dedicated to the American states, Illinois. (Beck was about five blocks down the street, at the Bill Graham.)

According to Asthmatic Kitty, the label that's putting out Illinois, they got an angry letter from DC Comics complaining about a picture of Illinois resident Superman on the cover art for Sufjan's album. They managed to work out a deal where they can sell the CDs they have but future albums won't have Clark Kent on them. So naturally, we ran to the merch table as soon as we got in, and, to our delight, they were selling off the CDs with the pictures of the Man of Steel. No, we didn't buy two (one to listen to, one to sell) -- but we thought about it!

Making the pre-concert settling-in process complete, we looked up from lovingly caressing our new purchase to see -- not only SFist Krissy, but also -- Jason Schwartzman! Well, it was either Jason Schwartzman or a guy with Jason's distinctive nose and bad posture, wearing an aqua tank top and swimming upstream with his posse to get closer to the stage.

Uneven metered time, the Fighting Illini, a loud guy in the back, and a song about John Wayne Gacy, after the jump.

We came in right as opening act Liz Janes' set was ending, with a rousing folky rendition of Swing Low Sweet Chariot, and then chatted with SFist Krissy as Sufjan set up. Between the fun conversation and Sufjan's admirable speed in setting up his gigantic eight-person traveling orchestra's set, we were pleasantly surprised at how fast the glockenspiel chimed out to start off the headline act.

Sufjan and his band stormed onto stage in their handmade Fighting Illini cheerleading costumes and Illinois flag (this guy has totally done his research on Illinois, mad props) and kicked off the show with some cheers ("ready? Okay!") and their Illinois tribute song, which then seamlessly segued into his show-tunesy song, written in 5/8.

Okay, so Sufjan really only has like two and a half songs -- there's the upbeat syncopated one in either 5/8 or 7/8 (the 7/8 one goes: doo-doo-doo, doo-doo, rest rest; doo-doo-doo, doo-doo, rest rest -- we really like those, they got some swaing), the slow poignantly Simon and Garfunkle-esque one, and a couple fragments of other songs (the funk one being a highlight).

But the two and a half songs are great! The John Wayne Gacy song (slow) and the songs about broken hearts (also slow) sent chills up our spine as Sufjan and the band spun out the stories in the lyrics, and we've never seen an audience so hushed -- except for the drunk guy in the back who kept loudly declaiming, "THIS IS JUST LIKE THE OPERA, EVERYONE IS SO QUIET" and who also randomly said "douche" fairly loudly too. We made SFist Krissy move down so we could avoid him. (We bet Schwartzman could've taken care of douche-man!)

It was kind of like a jazz band concert, kind of like an old-fashioned musical, and kind of like some indie rock. It was pretty transcendent. Even the guy (who we suspect was douche-man) who spoiled the ending of the one slow song by shouting out something incomprehensible (maybe "Illini?") didn't ruin the vibe. Every band should have a glockenspiel; it really adds that magic touch!