On June 21, Jagjaguwar posted a piece on its website by Justin’s author friend Michael Perry, eloquently describing the album. “Bon Iver, Bon Iver is the frozen beast pressing upward from a loosening earth, one ear cocked to the echo of the ghost choir still singing, the other craving the martial call of drums tumbling, of thrum and wheeze. The desolation smoke has dissipated, cut with strips of brass. Celebration will not be denied, the cabinet cannot contain the rattle, there is meat on the bones … There is a sturdiness – an insistence – to Bon Iver, Bon Iver that allows him to escape the cabin in the and desperation woods without burning it to the ground … In the absence of solid ground, the whirlwind becomes a whirlpool, and Bon Iver, Bon Iver is Justin Vernon returning to former haunts with a new spirit. The reprises are there – solitude, quietude, hope compressed – but always a rhythm arises, a pulse vivified by gratitude and grace notes, some as bright as a bicycle bell. The winter, the legend, has faded to just that, and this is the new momentary present. The icicles have dropped, rising up again as grass.”
The album’s reviewers were similarly lachrymose. In Mojo’s four-star review James McNair described it as “a record that invites us to reconnect with the seasons and the endless cycle of life”, claiming the “synthesized textures … exit your speakers with the slow-creeping drama of ink on blotting paper … As a listener, you feel as if you’re up Fall Creek sans sat-nav, but the sense of disorientation is welcome, almost soothing.”48 Q’s Victoria Segal, meanwhile, heard “a horizon-widening record … this sense of space and movement matched by the expansiveness of the songs [creating] an eerie feeling of loss and yearning.”49
The Evening Standard’s David Smyth called it “expansive stuff, dramatic and complex where its predecessor was barely there … some of the most beautiful music you’ll hear … if his last album struck a chord, this one strikes dozens.”50 Neil McCormick at the Telegraph, awarding four stars, praised its “degree of inventiveness and creative confidence that suggests there was nothing accidental about his original success”. The record was, he continued, “an amorphous merging of lateral strands strung together by melody and emotion” incorporating “the everything-at-once futurism of Radiohead” and “locating human spirit in digital technology, Vernon gives Auto-Tune a good name”51. Further five-star reviews were forthcoming from the Sunday Times and Independent, whose reviewer stated “the lyrics are even more opaque than those on his debut … the kind of poetic stream-of-consciousness that renders lyric sheets pointless. But more importantly, it’s a beautiful, flowing series of sounds and images, like a half-remembered dream to which you long to find the key … one … simply gives oneself up to the immersive experience of the music.” “It’s all unfathomably beautiful,” they gushed, “with meticulous attention paid to the creation of a complete, self-sufficient sound-world … Justin Vernon may just be the most important figure in popular music right now.”52
Writing in Uncut, another five-star appreciation of Bon Iver, Bon Iver, Bud Scoppa found hints of Sufjan Stevens, the Seventies Californian rock styles of Carl Wilson and Mike Love and even elements of Marvin Gaye in these grooves. “The full-bodied ensemble work results in an album with pace, scale and stylistic variety, but all of this sound and rhythm feels purposeful … ‘Beth/Rest’ has the satisfying resolution of the end title theme of a classic Western score … a majestic payoff.”53
Pitchfork and Paste would vote Bon Iver, Bon Iver their album of 2011 and, despite the initial iTunes leak, it hit number two in the Billboard chart and number four in the UK album chart.* Ed Horrox was pleasantly surprised by the album’s reception. “I think some people expected it, but being so close to it, I didn’t presume that it was going to be received so rapturously.”
And, unbeknownst to Vernon’s cloistered clique, that rapture was about to go mainstream.
* A primarily Texas and West Coast 10-gig schedule this time, in two sections; they started back at First Avenue on March 6 before making up for their cancelled Austin gig with several SXSW shows in the city and then, after their one-off Coachella appearance, Gayngs hit Portland, Washington and California in May/June.
* Justin’s plan was to release the new Shouting Matches album, made by Vernon, Moen and Phil Cook, and the unreleased five-track EP at the same time – a plan yet to come to fruition.
* A rumoured working title of the album was Letters For Marvin.
† Euclide made two films of the artwork being constructed, which were posted on YouTube.
* The title’s combination of two states, it’s been suggested, is a reference to the similarities between Minnesota and Wisconsin in terms of landscape and culture.
* Although other interpretations suggested the song was a reference to Hmong killer Chai Vang who shot eight people in Minnesota in 2004 in a dispute over a deer stand, killing six.
† Coincidentally known as the Wisconsinan Glacial Period.
* And the existential enlightenment he felt as a result: “I can see for miles, miles, miles”.
* Quite literally: the line “from the liver, sweating through your tongue” suggested all manner of intoxicants were involved.
† The sacrum is a triangular bone at the base of the spine.
‡ The sternum is the breastbone, guard of the human heart.
** A melic is a Greek poem performed in song; Vernon was certainly laying himself bare, albeit abstrusely, in these songs.
* And, stretching credibility, they read drug references into the lyric too in the line “nose up in the globes”.
† These are just two oddly illegal activities in Michigan; others include being drunk on a train, selling a car on a Sunday, a woman cutting her hair without her husband’s permission and having sex in a vehicle unless it’s parked on the property of the couple concerned.
‡ Her “I got outta La Grange” line is referenced here.
* In concert, Justin has claimed that this song was inspired by a man from Calgary called Paul he met while living in Ireland. The song may well relate to Paul’s story at that time, but the reference to Calgary was linked to the fact that Justin had never visited the city but, by gaining close friends from there, felt he knew it. Hence ‘Calgary’ became the title of a song about being intimate and comfortable with someone or something you’ve yet to encounter.
* The line “there’s really nothing to the south” has been suggested to mean both that geographically there’s little of note in Canada south of Calgary and that the relationship was suffering from a lack of bedroom activity.
* Beth was a place invented by Justin to represent a final resting place, emotionally or physically.
* A reference to romance clumsily held or likely to scald if handled too closely.
* Bon Iver, Bon Iver would also hit number one in Denmark and Sweden and Top 10 in Switzerland, Ireland, New Zealand, Australia, Canada and Belgium.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Stepping Up, Winding Down
ON November 30, 2011, Twitter lit up with one bemused question. “Who,” it read, retweeted across the Twittersphere for every Lady Gaga fan to fathom, “is Bonny Bear?”
It was, after all, a shock to the system of mainstream culture to hear a name they don’t recognise creep into the list of nominees for the 54th Grammy Awards, especially when it’s mentioned so often. Bon Iver picked up four nominations, for Record Of The Year, Best New Artist, Alternative Album Of The Year and, for ‘Holocene’, ‘Song Of The Year.* “We were sitting there together watching,” said Justine, “and then he was nominated in the first category and so we kind of ‘whew’ and sat back, you know? And then when he ended up with four for the night, you just can’t hardly believe it. It’s just so surreal.”1
Justin’s Tweets during the announcements displayed a distinct lack of interest. “Watching the badgers game with @danhuiting. super a lot better than last time we hung out. #notpenisfest” he typed shortly after the Record Of The Year nomination came in, then, on his appearance on the list of nominees for Song Of
The Year, he wrote “whats the difference between song and record?! ahhH! super weird butterflies! thank’s y’all. the badgers are playing UNC. don’t forget!!”. His last Tweet of the event, though, proved he was staying tuned right through until Jason Aldean was nominated in the Best Country Album category: “Aldean is INDIE! I love Jason Aldean. Fucking real country music! Also, Ludacris has never pissed me off. Cool! #backtobadgers”.
Vernon wasn’t just uncomfortable with showing an interest in the Grammys, but also with the idea of attending a major award ceremony at all. He’d made his views clear in a fuming post on his Blobtower blog on August 29, angered at watching the slick commercialism of the MTV Awards and raging disparagingly against musicians who put money before art. “Why do we NEED this shit so bad?” he wrote. “Why don’t we just have MUSIC? DO music? Soul? I don’t know. I don’t mean to criticise. Anyone. Actually. Except for MTV. You might have had a very large opportunity to be stabilise your self as a global presence of culture and art about 15 years ago and you fucked the dog. Sorry. I’m with my girls on this one. It’s becoming increasingly clear as I think about it more and more, that the dollars, if they ARE a part of why you are doing something … they are a part of why you are doing something. That’s fucked to me. That’s the absence of spirit, glue, fabric of what makes us a person. It distracts us from what we could be doing: WORK. On EARTH … one last thought: What would Bill Hicks say?”2
It was clear enough why Vernon felt he didn’t particularly need or covet the dubious honour of Grammy nods. Over the course of 2011 he’d become very much the master of his own destiny. His gigs had become huge; a theatre tour of the US in July and August with support from The Rosebuds sold out instantly. “He told me, ‘They took me on my first real tour, so I want to take them out,’ “3 Bon Iver’s tour agent Adam Voith said of The Rosebuds being booked for the first 12 dates of the US tour, despite a huge influx of requests from bands to play with Bon Iver. The tour opened in Milwaukee where Justin was spotted punching the air along to The Rosebuds’ ‘The Woods’ and the rammed crowd went wild to the line in ‘Holocene’, played early on in the set – “you’re in Milwaukee, off your feet”. By the time the show finished with a sumptuous ‘Calgary’ and the squealing solos and Top Gun horns of ‘Beth/Rest’, some of Bon Iver’s now nine-strong band* even slipping on shades for the song to add to the Eighties vibe, the crowd were in paroxysms. “I wasn’t shocked, because I know what Justin is as a frontman,” Ivan Howard said on seeing the audience’s reaction to Bon Iver that night, “and I wasn’t shocked at people’s reactions to it, because I know how people react at shows. But I was so proud of these sounds – the way it came together, the bigness. It was really moving. It was perfect.”4
He’d also surrounded himself with a close-knit clique of family and friends to tour with, in an effort to keep him grounded as the world opened out for him. “They just make you remain who you are and who you were,” Vernon said. “By being good friends they hold you accountable, I guess, and they always have. I think it’s really easy to see … a lot of falsities about how things actually are. Like the whole fame thing, and how there are famous people talking to famous people. There’s the industry, even at an indie level, and that can just be not real sometimes, even though it pretends to be. Not in a negative way, it’s just not aware of itself. I just feel like by knowing that, you kind of remain far away from some of that and know that you’re not a part of something that’s weird.”5
“The way Justin views everyone he works with is very heartfelt,” Darius Van Arman adds. “He’s not uncomfortable with mixing or blurring the lines between friendship and business. That can spell the path to ruin for many artists, but I think Justin’s also a very good judge of character. He has very good instincts with who to trust in the people around him. His batting average on that is very high, which is why it’s functional.”6
From that early July/August raft of Bon Iver, Bon Iver shows in large clubs, casino halls, theatres and small open-air venues – the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, the Boston House Of Blues, New York’s United Palace Theatre, The National in Richmond, the Amphitheatre in Raleigh – the gigs expanded exponentially. Occasionally sharing the bill with Kathleen Edwards, sometimes with Fleet Foxes, The Walkmen or Other Lives, by the time the September dates stretched into Canada and Europe Bon Iver had begun playing multiple shows in cities; two nights at San Diego’s Spreckels Theatre, two nights with Edwards at London’s 5,000-capacity Hammersmith Apollo. The capacities of the US venues he was playing on his return from Europe were approaching the size of mini-arenas – 7,000 filled the UIC Pavilion in Chicago to watch him and, just weeks after the Grammy nominations were announced Bon Iver were due to round off the first leg of the Bon Iver, Bon Iver tour with two sold-out shows at Eau Claire’s 3,500 capacity Zorn Arena, a personal milestone for Vernon which would cement him forever as a true Eau Claire Local Hero. He’d even donate the proceeds from the shows to a local shelter for women and children fleeing domestic abuse, the Boston Refuge House.
“Professors of mine were there,” Vernon said, “people who helped form who I am. It was near Christmas and it just felt very Christmas-y and thankful and a lot of gratitude involved. A very happy, shiny situation.”7
What’s more, offers had started to filter in from the bookers of the 2012 festival season; Bon Iver were offered the headline slot at both the highbrow Latitude festival in the UK and at Washington’s Sasquatch! festival. Vernon had not only expanded his insular intimacy to fill large halls with tides of noise and grace, he was ascending to the upper echelons of the alternative rock vanguard without having once compromised his art and principles.
“One of the most amazing things about this band is it hasn’t changed from day one,” said Voith of a series of shows two years in the arranging. “Its operations, its motivations, its measures of success, its decisions – it hasn’t changed. They haven’t made one compromise.”8
As with live shows, so with music. In August, announced just the day before via an enigmatic Tweet, Justin’s collaboration with James Blake had hit YouTube, swiftly racking up a million views. ‘Fall Creek Boys Choir’* hooked Justin’s vocodered electro-soul flurries, multi-tracked and singing entirely different songs over each other, onto Blake’s doomy dubstep desolation, complete with cranky woodblock beats, psycho synth interludes and noises like barking wolves. Yet there was an eerie beauty and grandeur to the track, due partly to Blake’s gracious piano refrains and partly to Vernon’s lyrics of utter loss – “all went in the fire, drowning in the sea … I’ll wait for you, you know, and we both end up alone”. Although no other tracks would emerge from the pair for the time being, Blake hinted that more joint projects may be in the works.
“There are a couple things, we’ll see,” Blake said. “I’m happy with the things we’ve done, but I do feel like Justin is the sort of person who … I think anything I do with him, it deserves more time than just sitting on a bus and doing it, or making it in a hotel room. I want to spend a bit of time and really think about something. I think it’d be nice to get on stage together at some point and do something, but … again, we barely have any time. Our tours are almost always on opposite sides of the country, or the world. It’s not really crossing paths all that easily, but we try to stay in contact.”9
Vernon was also branching out into other media. “We’ve been working on a film,” he told Dazed And Confused in the summer, “this non-narrative art-video project that will be a visual compliment to the record, so I’ve been doing a lot of photography and filming on my own.”10 The project hit the shelves in November, a deluxe edition of Bon Iver, Bon Iver including videos accompanying each song. ‘Perth’ came with film, directed by Isaac Gale and David Jensen, of landscapes shot from airplane windows and then manipulated, distorted or mirror-imaged along firm lines in the image and flooded with colour to resemble kaleidoscopic alien worlds as the song reached its stirring, cataclysmic reveille climax. Dan Huiting and Ryan Thompson’s
film for ‘Minnesota, WI’ was all ink unravelling in water, neon ice sculpture images of leaves dripping melt-water and dust motes refracting the spectrum as they floated in the air, nature’s glory blindingly exaggerated. ‘Holocene’s film, also by Dan Huiting, with Andre Durand, took a more naturalistic view of the same thing, its footage cut to a rhythm reflecting the track’s lull and lustre; slow motion shots of ice cliffs, broiling waves crashing in reverse, woodland frozen thick with frost like opaque cables, the breathtaking sculpture of winter. The magnificence of the glacial earth – the jagged vacance, thick with ice –highlighted the song’s sentiment of humanity’s lower standing on the planet. Then, for a glimpse of frivolity, sensuousness and life reflecting the lyric, ‘Towers’, directed by Huiting and Thompson, flipped the shutter to spring, following the withering, decay and re-bloom of bright swathes of flowers.
Dawn scenes of woodland and crop fields, dotted with incongruous floating mirrored planks or men dragging illuminated sacks, gave a hazy, hallucinogenic feel to Isaac Gale and David Jensen’s short for ‘Michicant’ and their film for ‘Hinnom, TX’ tackled sunset over an icy highway, the sun an exploding, hellish furnace and the roadway shifting with spectral sands. Then, as the album enters its final phase, humans finally appeared. Motion-capture cameras followed a pair of feet walking across wet sand into the shallows in Isaac Gale’s film for ‘Wash.’, the cameraman throwing himself into the onrushing waves and surfing back to shore.
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