Track-By-Track: Bon Iver, Bon Iver

He’s gone from being that freaky fella living out in the woods your mum warned you off playing with as a kid to Kanye-lovin’, Gayngs-pimpin’ toast of the town in the space of two short years — now Justin Vernon is aiming to put the wheels back on his Bon Iver project with that hugely-anticipated, eponymous second album. Better get out your galoshes and pack up those snow shovels, then — it’s Bon Iver O’Clock, and The Stool Pigeon is all outta wood to chop.

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1. ‘PERTH’. Opens with an attractive, hammered refrain on clean-sounding electric guitar, which weirdly prefigures Vernon’s vocal entrance. Then drifts into a military drum fanfare as Vernon softly croons, “This is not a place / Not yet awake, I’m raised of make,” before that familiar, multi-tracked falsetto really kicks into gear. Finally, guitars and horns come crashing together as bass drum hits go off like fireworks. It’s a strange and sorta lopsided affair, but somehow feels complete — another Bon Iver hallmark. Indeed, the man himself told us (see full interview in the new issue, out June 9) he was leading off more with textures during writing for the record than with fully-formed songs: “I’d plug in my guitar and shape it with pre-amps and using different microphones, mostly all in the box before it gets to the recording device; just get it so it’s sounding really good. And then you get to a point where suddenly you’re in that zone, the sonics of it are singing what you want the song to be, and it starts to write itself.”

2. ‘MINNESOTA, WI’. The title may be a reference to an area in Wisconsin called Minnesota Junction, but the effect is deliberately disorienting, as in, ‘you might think you know where you are with Bon Iver, sunshine, but believe me I know and you haven’t got the foggiest’. Almost mathy, chirruping guitar introduces this track, which seems to flow by extension from the first according to its own internal logic. That’s to say, it doesn’t feel like a standalone experience: smidges of sax and electric piano, then a deftly plucked arpeggio on acoustic, and Vernon wheeling out his Sunday-best falsetto for an impassioned refrain of “never gonna break, never gonna break”. Also noteworthy for the unusual rhyme: “So carry on my dear, what is clear up in the daylight is we’re hung here / Fall is coming soon, a new year for the moon and the Hmong here”. The Hmong are an indigenous people of South East Asia. So what’s up with that, Justin?

3. ‘HOLOCENE’. As we understand it, Holocene is the name of a fave bar of Justin’s, but the term also refers to the current climactic era which follows on from the last major ice age, also known as the ‘Wisconsin glaciation’. So, a song about the retreat of the ‘emotional ice age’ which prompted that fateful move out to the country all that time ago? Well, perhaps, with Vernon attempting to come to terms with some foolish course of action or other: “You fucked it, friend, it’s on it’s head, it struck the street / You’re in Milwaukee, off your feet,” and, reassuringly, “At once I knew I was not magnificent.” Musically, the track opens sparsely with a typically chilly, acoustic arpeggio before fat     st-fluttering, brushed drums and bass help bring things in from the cold a little, like the first thaw in spring. The trembling, ambient strings give this a wonderfully delicate finale.

4. ‘TOWERS’. Again, with the clean electric guitar sound (apparently an homage to treasured old Motown recordings), this time in the shape of a shambling, Neil Young-ish pick’n’strum. Then a bassy note ushers in a locomotive beat and lap steel as the song enters a flushed, fluid mid-section; an inspired moment. The song threatens to build again at the close, but dies away in another instance of consummate good taste. Sweet moves, Vern.

5. ‘MICHICANT’. A delicate, tear-stained waltz with minimal percussion. Trumpets make a respectful entrance midway through this sneakily-titled track, before Vernon comes back in to pick up the slack. Lyrically he seems to be reflecting on old love and — why not — maybe even losing his V plates: “Hurdle all the waitings up, know it wasn’t wedded love / Four long minutes end and it was over it’d all be back, and the frost took up the eyes.” Bon Iver lyrics are a funny thing; on the surface they seem opaque enough to discourage further investigation, but they have a habit of drawing you in anyway. Which we suppose reflects the manner of their composition, which starts with Vernon grasping at words for their syllable sounds and gradually knocking them into shape. We’re not sure if it’s poetry, exactly, but it sure sounds impressive in parts: “No it wasn’t maiden-up, the falling or the faded luck / Hung up in the ivory, both were climbing for a finer cause / Love can hardly leave the room / with your heart.”

6. ‘HINNOM, TX’. Bit different, this one, with something of the reflecyive, mantra-like feel of ‘Woods’. Gentle, echoing piano chords made to faintly distort, and Vernon giving his capacious, literally under-sung lower register a welcome run-out. It sounds weirdly like a Christmas song, albeit a strange and emotionally shattering one. Vernon is finding all sorts of interesting ways to stretch out on this record.

7. ‘WASH’. A piano taps out gentle octaves as the faintest of guitar lines plays out in the background, like unseen water dripping in cave pools. Again, the ebb and flow of the arrangements are sublime here — with strings, cushioning piano chords and itchy percussion swimming in and out of the mix to produce a beautifully intimate feel. The cinematic strings, in particular, have a seductive otherworldliness to them. If lyrically For Emma… was a snapshot of a soul in hibernation, Bon Iver seems to be documenting the mysterious processes which allow us to evolve as human beings: “I… I’m growing like the quickening hues / I… I’m telling darkness from lines on you.”

8. ‘CALGARY’. A hint of Gayngs’ smooth-pop influence here, perhaps? Eighties synths blow in like dry ice, the drums have a certain, epic thunder about them… Scratch that, maybe it’s Kanye’s influence at play here — then the bass drops out, a twisting, distorted guitar figure comes in and it’s sheerest magic from there on in, Vernon’s vocal sprouting wings as the song gets seriously airborne. There’s a sense of death as a curtain for the next world on the track; a liberating feeling that revelation lies just around the corner: “You know that all the rope’s untied / I was only for to die beside.”

9. ‘LISBON, OH’. A bit of Brian Eno-ish, treated-guitar ambience to help you to put your brain back on straight between what will turn out to be Bon Iver’s two most striking tracks.

10. ‘BETH/REST’. A softly padding beat and and Rhodes piano line that’s all sleepy, retro bombast. Then some lazy sax squiggles and guitar bursts swoop in, and you’re left scratching your ears in disbelief — this sounds like nothing so much as the credits music for a Jerry Bruckheimer blockbuster from the eighties. Yes, we can just see our dads dozing off as the ‘key grip’ and ‘best boy’ lashes up on screen! What the eff is going on here, exactly? We were still collecting our jaw off the floor with this one when we decided to ask Justin about it: “I didn’t want anyone to think I was jerking ’em around,” he says. “I mean, if they think that it’s fine but it’s a serious song. It’s about letting that love into your life and letting the part of you that’s selfish die. It’s like a joyful sleep if you will, but it’s a wakening, too. I love that the song is last on there because it’s the most pure song on the record; the most joyous sort of message.”

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There you have it, then, a belting follow-up from Mr Vernon. The songs are generally thornier and more fidgety than For Emma…’s more anthemic moments, but they’re also more assured and bolder in their experiments. Seems like a fair trade-off to us, and it’s blessed proof to the lingering doubters that Vernon can transcend the grizzly man-myth fostered by the first record. And Kanye is nowhere to be found.

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