Above is last year's trailer for Bucks County, PA's Illinois's EP series released off +1. The EPs were released in chapters, alongside a series of mildly entertaining webisodes featured on their myspace page. If you're after Illinois videos, however, it might be more worth your time to watch them live or just listen to the EPs. I featured singles from the first two 'chapters' on The Sound Between on WNYU.org last fall, but the best is definitely chapter 3, with "Are You Coming With Me?" The 6th (and final) chapter was released March 31. The songs get long without getting boring, evocative of Italian 'intellectual cinema' that tries to bore and entrance the viewer to force their minds to wander and reflect on what they see. Smart, folky indie rock (piano, banjo, male harmonies) with juvenile Nintendo ethos (apropos to this collective album's subject matter from the point of view of a conceptual "kid catastrophe" in the mind of songwriter Chris 'Arch' Archibald, and all the Super Mario Bros hums and zaps) that you can get lost in faster than a round of Bubble Bazinga.
I think they are under-appreciated. Read QRO Magazine's review of Illinois' 6th Kid Catastrophe installment (which names it their best effort to date) here.
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