Review Summary: The search continues, but it's not clear where...
I would think that by this point in Bon Iver's career everything had been said about him and his work, but as much as it happens to me with many other critically acclaimed bands in general, there's something that doesn't quite add up.
I've been a Vernon fan ever since I heard the world-famous story of the man who isolated himself in his father's hunting cabin in the middle of a Wisconsin forest in the middle of winter, after the breakup of his life as I knew it. Thus, watching series and surviving the relentless cold, among winter fumes, he created, along with his loneliness, one of the most recognizable albums of the last ten years. Folk at that time had turned into a facet closer to Chamber Pop with people like Sufjan Stevens in 2006 with Illinois and Grizzly Bear in 2006 with Yellow House. For Emma Forever ago enters to give a new status, giving birth to a new kind of folk scene. After having made havoc in such scene she releases, after several projects, Bon Iver, Bon Iver, a more ambitious and warm record than its predecessor. Vernon takes a long look at his past, giving us landscapes of his most precious memories, but not in a very concrete way.
The album begins with the explosive eternity of Perth, breaking with Flume's first intimate impression in For Emma, noting that he would not be here without the people around him; adding, too, that without the love lost in For Emma, he would not be here. Perth is as much a song of gratitude to his present as to his past, giving way to the misfortune of Minnesota's fate.
If For Emma was about the present pain of living broken, Bon Iver, Bon Iver goes more to the melancholy side of that present pain. Justin looks back over every corner remembering every step he took to the cabin in Wisconsin. Moving away from the conceptual aspect, this is where you see the structural deconcentration of the sound in development, an aspect that will be repeated throughout the album. In Justin's mix of guitars, banjo and vocals an unrecognizable instrument is added to the drum input in the second part of the track, making the harmonization break, and not for the better. Then the theme continues and ends without adding anything else to the structure.
After the sonic disagreement, Holocene enters to re-establish the structure of the album, which takes very little time to be broken again later. Holocene along with Towers should be the most recognizable tracks on first listening of Bon Iver's career, adding that either track perfectly highlights what Vernon wanted to convey on the album. It should be noted that Holocene is very influenced by the solo work that Justin had parallel to his band, highlighting the same relationship with Hazelton, a beautiful song that is characterized by the delicate and ethereal atmosphere given by the parallel guitars, details that in the present issue are mixed perfectly with the other instruments and Vernon's voice, giving a peaceful and welcoming atmosphere. Right here he introduces us to the feeling, not the goal, basic of the album: the significance of being insignificant.
Entering Towers, the song that most shows the closeness of Vernon's alternative country influence, giving rise to the same environmental scenario that was generated in Minnesota, but with a clear staging of a riff of iconic guitar games at this point, representing these two towers. Reviving a young love, full of nostalgia.
Following the constant look back in Michicant, Justin goes into her early childhood, embodied in a swaying of guitars that later will be added to trumpets at the same time, being in the background more air instruments that are added, creating the space, while joining certain details of a drummer with delay. All this following Vernon in a falsetto chorus already characteristic of him.
Finishing the nostalgic trilogy of Holocene, Towers and Michicant, Hinnom, TX enters. It is one of the moments where Vernon pulls to a side a little more metaphorical, making a juxtaposition between lyrics not very precise in clarity, and synthesizers wrapped in delay mixed with Vernon's voice along with certain sonic details, which really lead nowhere on the subject. The gap in the album becomes stronger, giving an imprecise feeling at the sound level. It gives way to Walsh.
In my opinion, from what Bon Iver has shown so far, this is the most mature moment of the work in question, where one reaches the conclusion of Vernon's search. Where one finds the parts of lost love, left in the previous songs, and an internal conversation which reaches a conclusion as nostalgically eternal as it is closed, which would close the album with an ethereal and not concrete feeling, giving way to an eternal concept which would continue forever, but it was not.
The song begins with a piano recorded with a natural acoustic, sounding drowned out along with one of Vernon's warmest lyrics taking steps between one of the clearest settings of Vernon's voice, joining, as the song develops, various string instruments, guitars and rhythmic games, each one put in its place in detail, ending up in nothing as it began. Breaking the silence of Calgary.
Some of the listeners found it difficult to get to this level of the album. The structure of Calgary is not unpleasant, but the staging of some instruments, especially guitars with no notion of location, makes listening a bit confusing. The lyrical message of a love that could not be, and that is drowned out in their look of what they were, is understood, although the structure of the song does not help it.
Between Calgary and Beth/Rest is Lisbon, OH. Being the simplest material of Vernon's goal to manage to transmit spaces that once existed and that his head can take up again, it ends in a combination of minimalist synthesizers and overlapping guitars, to give entry to the last song.
And where everything should be clear it becomes even more confusing, giving us a not very well guided setting, since Justin's own conscience knows that it was not a good idea, he says it himself in several interviews, he felt it should end like that and not otherwise. And yes, it may sound totally out of place and it eats away at all the elements that were locked into the album, but the feeling conveyed on this track is too expressive and difficult to put aside. The lyrics are a very beautiful closure giving us one of the highest climaxes of the album on a lyrical level, although without feeling like it is closing the theme of the album, or the goal it had from the beginning. As has often been the case, what killed a certain part of this song was Justin's own lack of vision on how to put together an album, he himself knows that everything done here was on purpose, being aware of the gaps he was leaving. Closing the album with a mix of elements that at least leave something behind as a result of listening to the whole work.
CONCLUSION: Bon Iver is Justin Vernon's first album as a mark of his sound and his first level album, which led him to have ideas that didn't favor much the listening of the album, filling a side of the album a little more personal. Although leaving this aside, there is a very beautiful mise-en-scene with peaks that are grateful to exist, demonstrating Bon Iver's sensitivity when it comes to creating ballads, invoking moments from his past; from our past, sharing with us once again his most precious feelings.
R: 7/10
