Bon Iver, Bon Iver

Bon Iver, Bon Iver

Reviewed by: Chris Bosman

In the years since 2008’s For Emma, Forever Ago, Bon Iver frontman Justin Vernon has been busy. There have been side-project releases from Volcano Choir and GAYNGS, shows with his former DeYarmond Edison bandmates in Megafaun, and of course his collaborations and tour with cultural zeitgeist, musical superstar, and instant meme generator Kanye West. In some ways the manner in which Vernon kept showing up in various corners of the musical globe made the years between For Emma and Bon Iver’s recently leaked self-titled follow-up seem rather short. But the musical maturation that Bon Iver shows highlights both the length of time between the two records, and the breadth of different musical experiences Vernon has been privy to in the interim.

For Emma, Forever Ago subsisted primarily on plaintive acoustic guitars and Vernon’s gorgeous, uplifting vocals. Stop me if you’ve heard this before. But where Vernon stood apart from so many sad sack singer/songwriters was in arrangement and construction. The rich harmonies that opened For Emma’s “Creature Fear” made the song seem hopeful, but when it swooned into broken, lonely guitar chords and whispered vocals, that feeling immediately transitioned to hopeless. And on the 2009 EP Blood Bank, Vernon subverted the traditional uses of Auto-Tune to create a towering a cappella triumph of helplessness. He stood apart from similar contemporaries with a musical fearlessness and a deft hand for arranging his music to heighten its emotional impact.

Absolutely none of those skills are lost on Bon Iver. Two-thirds of the way into “Towers”, it turns almost Old West, with a choir of trumpets and a rollicking drumbeat, and pulls the song out of its quietly beautiful musings. “Calgary” features synths, which would deserve an (!) addendum if GAYNGS hadn’t happened, and marries them to scattered pieces of guitar distortion and driving percussion, the collective effect of which is a battered sense of yearning. “When the demons come, they can’t subside,” Vernon sings to end the song, appropriately encapsulating the track’s host of complex emotions.

For all of its similarities in songwriting, the intervening years have afforded the three-piece a host of new tones to play with. Opener “Perth” rocks gorgeously rendered, fragile electric guitars that flutter over Vernon’s impassioned vocals. Actually, “Perth”, along with “Holocene”, seem to betray a previously unheard Mark Kozelek influence. Closer “Beth / Rest” sounds like the greatest Genesis song never recorded, with its Best of the 80s keys and sparse drum pads, which joins “Calgary” and “Hinnom, TX” as a trio of excellent synth-driven tracks that still retain Bon Iver’s sense of pacing and confounding beauty. And “Wash.”, with its distant pianos and dramatic strings, is probably the most devastatingly beautiful track in the Bon Iver oeuvre.

It’s been an amazing year for this kind of music: plaintive, introverted, complex music that both revels in its sadness and serves as catharsis for it. I’m thinking of James Blake’s self-titled debut, of the Mountain Goats’ All Eternals Deck, of the best moments of the Antlers’ Burst Apart. I bring up such strong competition only to highlight my meaning when I say that Bon Iver is easily the finest of all this year’s efforts in that respect. The time Vernon has spent away from his bandmates in Bon Iver has only served to solidify the group’s strengths, and to give them a wider variety of methods with which to explore that limitless talent.

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[This review was incorrectly attributed when first posted. It was written entirely by Chris Bosman. Apologies to Chris, he's a trooper - Ed.]