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.