Bon Iver
Bon Iver
(4AD)
What a strange, beautiful album. In the same way a milky twilight can render beauty on to a gnarled scrapyard, Justin Vernon (aka Bon Iver) has wrapped his spooky, double-tracked falsetto around these angular, unconventional songs to produce something with an uncanny shimmer. The acoustic backwoods haze of his first album, For Emma, Forever Ago, has been replaced with a clarity and sonic adventurousness: Calgary is a warm bath of synths; Wash sparkles with Steve Reich minimalist pianos; Perth adds a scuzzy machine-gun drum beat. Jazz horns flutter into songs for a few seconds, only to disappear from sight. Such is the confidence of an indie troubador who now calls Kanye West a friend. At one point (on Minnesota, WI) Vernon duets with himself, showcasing his surprisingly deep baritone voice. Throughout no choruses are reached, no pop hooks are swung. That is, apart from the closer, Beth/Rest, which sounds as if it has been parachuted in from a 1980s Phil Collins album. It is an odd way to end an album that more than lives up to Bon Iver’s much loved debut, but one that fits with his resistance to convention. Similarly, for an album where everything is named after a concrete place, it succeeds in being utterly otherworldly.
Edd McCracken
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