Justin Vernon’s first album under the Bon Iver moniker was the unlikely product of a ruined relationship, a battle with mononucleosis, and a self-imposed hermitage in the northern woods of Wisconsin. It was a sparse, ramshackle record that was by turns confessional and willfully obscure.
Coming as something as a surprise, For Emma, Forever Ago was also quite successful.
The self-titled sophomore record replaces some of the intimacy with a grander cinematic sweep, but Vernon’s artistic voice is still much the same. In “Holocene,” he insists that “I was not magnificent,” just before the song kicks in and proves him quite wrong. Magnificence on a humble scale is how Bon Iver operates, and the addition of a judiciously placed, and sometimes unorthodox, ensemble helps convey that.
Carrying the weight as usual is Vernon’s uncompromising sincerity. Whatever he’s singing about, there’s never any doubt that he means it. For many other songwriters, that’s something of a curse; the urge to be profound is often tiresome and wearying. In this case, the willfully obscure lyrics can signify nothing (or anything) to the listener, and the words are simply another instrument.
A few phrases come through clearly enough, even if the context is difficult to grasp. “Michigant” has such an arresting melody that the words are unimportant, even when they come across as “pressed against the pane could see the veins and there was poison out.” “Calgary” is the lead-off single, and I hope it sees widespread airplay, if only so that a wide audience has to contemplate lyrics like “teach our bodies: haunt the cause/I was only trying to spell a loss”
The only odd spot on the record is the closing track, “Beth/Rest.” The instrumentation is led by a trite mid-1980’s adult contemporary electric piano tone, overlaid with soprano saxophone noodling. It’s at direct odds with Vernon’s earnest, rough delivery, but it somehow works despite itself. The end result sounds like something playing over the ending credits of an alternate-universe John Hughes movie.
So, is it any good? Most definitely. If not in sound, in effect, this is the record a rural American Sigur Rós would make, a broad impressionistic rush of grandeur that demands deeper attention than it first suggests.