Bon Iver, Bon Iver

ISSUE #303

Bon Iver will be releasing the fifth album of their two-decade career this Friday. The elation this gives me is hard to overstate. Judging by the singles, it’ll be a masterpiece, for me—one that speaks to those silent floods that make up a private life. In truth, so far he has made four of my dearest albums on planet Earth.

The stickiest strength of his endlessly engaging albums lies in the sonic stitching. There’s always something surprising in the mix—from the spectral, icy wails of For Emma, Forever Ago to the shredded digital paper of i,i. In “We,” maybe my favorite of his songs, righteous sampled yelps pepper the back-half with bullet holes, another of many subtle moments of studio wizardry that serve the magic of the greater whole. His soundscapes call attention to silence as much as his melodies bring catharsis, and the tonal sequencing of each release rewards repeated front-to-back listening.

In short, his work taught me how to structure an album (or a playlist): a prologue of short noise at the top, a hook-laden second track (never a single) that serves as an aural thesis, all followed by—and here’s the key—a percussive left turn, a down-and-dirty nastier-piece that feels borderline out of place (“Minnesota, WI,” “10 d E A T h b R E a s T,” even “Lump Sum” with its steady strumming cadence and heightened tempo). From there, we unravel as usual until the penultimate track, typically based around a single repeated line or couplet—a haiku, a mantra, a beckoning towards the spirit—if not completely wordless in reverie. All to serve a shining tour-de-force at the end, like a “Beth, Rest,” a “Re: Stacks,” the beauty of “RABi.”

Furthermore, his lyrics have been one perhaps of the single greatest influences on my writing over the years. Not only did I write almost every piece in my youth to one of his songs (“Fall Creek Boys Choir” basically got me through college), but in fact, far from the “nonsense” his abstruse lyrical approach often gets characterized as, I always understood his poetry very deeply, and suddenly. Perhaps it dragged my writing too far into the murky depths of obscurity, but one cannot ignore the pull his style and technique had on my psyche.

There were several times in the 21st century that I thought Bon Iver would never make an album again. In the five years between the 2011 self-titled and 22, A Million in 2016—longer, even, than the gap between Channel Orange and Blonde— I figured it was over. After 22, A Million, I thought: “Thank you so much! That’s probably it now, though.”

Then one more came. And now, another. So I make this playlist, a summary and celebration, in honor of a world I once thought couldn’t exist: one where there will be more Bon Iver to come.

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