June 21st, 2011
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In this age of indie rock stars, no one is more synonymous with indie as a new musical continent than Bon Iver, the musical brainchild of songwriter Justin Vernon. Given his affinity to beards, acoustic guitars, tiny remote cabins, and soft-spoken vocals it’s pretty hard to tear myself away from that connotation. Bon Iver is now more than just one man, more than just a lone collection of songs written in a remote Wisconsin cabin. With the release of the self-titled album Bon Iver, we are greeted with a tidal wave of sonic exploration.
Taking flight with the beautiful and haunting “Perth”, the album sets a pretty golden standard for itself. Thankfully Vernon is able to keep this standard rolling throughout the entire album; a hard task indeed. Almost every title pays homage to a city, which one is meant to assume has significance for the sound or direction each tune takes on. Maybe each track is his portrait of some dimension to each place and it paints a beautiful world I’d be lucky to see.
The production for this album is immensely creative and in many ways can harken back to a prog rock direction. Any sense of a standard song structure is completely abandoned, leaving a complete mish-mash of intertwining parts. This is definitely apparent when the album decides to throw you a curveball every 30 seconds or so and therein lies one of Bon Iver’s greatest strengths. It was impossible for me to guess what would come next, and many times I was completely taken aback at how interesting and creative he was able to make each song. If you are a fan of lush arrangements, then Bon Iver delivers a healthy dose.
Lyrically, this album lacks a clear motive, and I found it to be the main weakness of the project. To be fair, after second glance, I don’t think Vernon intended lyrics to be orthodox. Not only is the music meant to create a portrait, but I believe by their very sound and delivery, the lyrics are meant to do the same. Definitely not something for the lyrically minded. Sadly there was one minor venture which I found downright silly, which was the album closer “Beth/Rest” which sounded like a straight up 80′s electro-pop ballad. The kind of thing you’d expect to hear during the sex scene in the movie “Ghost”. Beyond this though, the real stand outs on this album are “Perth”, “Holocene”, “Wash”, and “Calgary”.
The final word on this album for me is the immense and cinematic power it holds. Not only does it paint pictures in my mind, but I find its depths an inspiring change to the two dimensional “artistic” stance that so many trendy bands take. With Bon Iver, we are shown that being artistic is not just a matter of how weird you are, but how much honesty and simple beauty you use and employ when creating a piece of art.
