Happy 10th Anniversary to Bon Iver’s eponymous second studio album Bon Iver (also commonly referred to as Bon Iver, Bon Iver), originally released June 17, 2011.
I listen to Bon Iver in the morning and all at once. The band is an hours-long affair for me, where I spread the five records across a coffee table and go through them one by one, savoring each. I don’t do this for other bands—Bon Iver feels special in this way that the records feel connected, best appreciated in terms of each other, rather than as standalone statements.
Most times I do this, there’s a Moment. The Moment happens at different points during the ritual, but it’s always the same. The world around me narrows, maybe for just a couple of seconds, and everything but the music seems less important. I feel this enormous sense of gratitude. I am in this world where beautiful things can happen.
Even though the Moment appears in different places, and on particularly harried mornings, it doesn’t happen at all, there’s one spot where it happens most often: the last verse of “Beth/Rest,” the last song on Bon Iver.
“Beth/Rest” is the ideal Bon Iver song. It has such a simple melody—we wiggle up the pentatonic scale, then back down. But everything else around it, like Justin Vernon’s unexpected chest voice after an album of falsetto, or the driving piano on an album dominated by airy electric guitars, makes it feel like it’s the most important thing in the world. Its tranquility is overpowering—truly creating a sense of, well, rest.
The other thing about “Beth/Rest” is that it is the last thing you hear before changing out the LP and starting the chaotic forty minutes of 22, A Million. While we didn’t know that when Bon Iver was released, it does change the meaning of this second-full length LP: for my money, this is the only Bon Iver album that isn’t dedicated to anguish.
When I say that, I’m not really talking about lyrics. The truth is, I still don’t really know any of the words to Bon Iver songs. Even though I know where every single drum beat is in “Perth” (and will often drum along), I don’t have the slightest idea what the song is about on a lyrical level. This, I think, is where the band’s most serious power is: I can tell you with confidence that Bon Iver is a record about stillness, regardless of what the lyrics say. Musically, they paint this vivid of a picture.
This is not the case with the rest of the discography. For Emma, Forever Ago (2007), even without the mythology behind it, is clearly a forlorn record. You can hear it in Vernon’s voice from the jump, which takes the form of a brittle and aching thing on “Flume” and doesn’t find any sense of grounding until the final track. 22, A Million (2016), is like a record thrown into a food processor: spliced up, rumbling, agitated, full of stops and starts. The finale (as of now) is i,i (2019), which is certainly at a lower volume than its predecessor and contains a few more approachable songs, but completely unravels by the end, leaving us to see that there is still so much that Vernon (and the rest of the band) is looking for—check out Michael Lewis’ saxophone solo on “Sh’Diah” for the crowning moment.
But that’s not Bon Iver. This record doesn’t necessarily pretend that there are not bad things in the world, or that the sounds here represent an island where they can’t trouble you. Instead, the point seems to be that all of this is going to happen no matter what, and you can still remain in touch with yourself amid that struggle.
The album begins with “Perth,” most noteworthy for the thundering percussion that signals a large shift in orchestration for Bon Iver. It’s tempting to say that the drums are signs of trouble on the horizon, but the euphoria of the swirling electric guitars around them leads us to feel that Vernon has summoned them there—they’re not something he is singing over or a storm that threatens to overtake him—they are part of his arrival in this place.
This careful use of the expanded band is what makes Bon Iver such a well-conceived record. Every track has some purposeful or unexpected choice that enriches it. “Wash.,” for example, has an undeniable sense of momentum and rising and falling volume, but the differences between the peaks and the valleys are no more than a couple of instruments. The result is a song with rising and falling action, but with one unified character. Its pond barely ripples but the water still moves.
Another great example is “Michicant,” which preserves a distinct 3/4 time signature across the track, even though the percussion always drops out when Vernon sings (leaving his voice to carry the meter). The time stays intact even through a section that seems to have no timekeeping at all. They maintain a pulse even when there’s little actively holding it together, producing a waltz with a meditative quality.
The instrumental miracles are clearly abundant, and I know I said I wasn’t going to talk about lyrics, but there is one thing that needs to be addressed: “And at once, I knew I was not magnificent.”
“Holocene” a miraculous song—it takes this central lyric, which sounds like it’s such a frightening and negative thing and renders it almost joyful. This is where Bon Iver truly makes peace with the universe—it is a good thing to feel this un-specialness. You, along with everything else in the world, is on an even playing field in nature. It makes things seem much less important, but also much safer. There are a lot of instruments, but the track never rises above a twinkle; each does just enough to build tension before the chorus and then release it on that most-important line.
So Bon Iver is much more than “The Album Where It Gets Electric.” The color palette on this album is so vivid because of how the band uses every instrument so precisely. The result is a record that’s attuned with itself, that resonates on its own terms, and is seemingly only interested in creating a beautiful space to live within for forty minutes. The rest of the catalogue has its fears and anxieties and transcendent moments, but in the middle of it, there is always this special place.
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