Review | Bon Iver - Bon Iver
For the many fans of Bon Iver, who fell in love with For Emma, Forever Ago way back in 2008, today is like Christmas. And considering For Emma, Forever Ago not only topped the best of 2008 lists, but made it onto the best of the last decade lists as well, this is one of the most anticipated albums of 2011. People will love it. And hate it. And compare it song-for-song to For Emma, Forever Ago.
Every single song off of For Emma, Forever Ago was simply beautiful. We all loved Skinny Love, and Flume. On second listen, it was The Wolves that stood out, but wait what about Re: Stacks? Everyone remembers what was going on when they first discovered it, or where they had been when
they had it on repeat for months. It is just one of those albums that really means something to everyone.
And after we had finally listened to the album enough times on repeat, we wanted to know when we could hear more. If For Emma, Forever Ago introduced us to Justin Vernon’s falsetto, the 2009 EP Blood Bank introduced his to his auto tuned falsetto.
Then last summer, when the 20-member band Gayngs released their LP, you could single out Vernon’s voice on a few tracks. And of course, November came and we heard Vernon on not one (Lost in the World), but six tracks. It’s likely that we all had the same ‘What the heck?/This is kinda bad ass’ reaction when Vernon’s voice came on between Nicki Minaj, Rick Ross and Mr. West himself.
And so some two and a half years later, Bon Iver’s sophomore album Bon Iver is out. And while it is nothing like For Emma, Forever Ago, it is something that isn’t completely unexpected for someone whose worked on such a wide variety of projects in between albums.
But most importantly, there are still plenty of beautiful moments in Bon Iver. On the creeping track Michicant, Vernon sings slowly, “Love can hardly leave the room with your heart.” On the equally beautiful Holocene, the always astute Vernon remains humble as he sings “and at once I knew I was not magnificent.” The song ends with a chorus that echoes on serenely, “and I could see for miles, miles, miles.”
Unlike For Emma, Forever Ago, more than a few of
these new tracks feature Vernon singing normally. That is to say, not in falsetto. In Hinnom, TX, Vernon only sings the chorus in falsetto, and sings the rest of the verses normally as the song vibrates around him.
Overall, this album draws on a lot of elements that we’ve seen before, just nothing that we’ve seen together. There’s the falsetto from For Emma, Forever Ago, the auto tune from Blood Bank. There’s
deeper vocals reminiscent of earlier Justin Vernon/DeYarmond Edison stuff and of course the 80s vibes from Gayngs and the WTF moments (Beth/Rest, anyone?) from his collaboration with Kanye.
Yet, no matter what direction Vernon decided to go on his second album, there’s only one thing people really want to hear: more pining in the woods for lost love. But wallowing is exhausting. It’s summer. Time to reinvent what we know of Bon Iver. And listening to Bon Iver is the perfect way to do it.
