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10 OCTOBER 2016
MUSIC FEATURE
Bon Iver's new album expands JustinVernon's microcosmic
experience out into a beautiful exploration of duality. Words Tim Lambert
Before the fame, the
headlining world tours,
Grammy wins and parties
with Kanye and Jay-Z, there was
Justin Vernon, playing obscure bars
in his hometown of Wisconsin
with wide-eyed questions of the
world and dreams of stardom.
What happens when you reach
the peaks of fame, have all your
questions answered, and find they
aren’t the answers you’re looking
for? That is where the 35-year-old
multi-instrumentalist finds himself
on 22, A Million – his third and
most decisive album as Bon Iver
– questioning losses of love, faith
and morality.
22, A Million is an album
set up on binaries: suffering
and redemption, pain and love,
sacrosanctity and ambiguity.
With it, Vernon delivers his most
diverse and experimental record
to date. While the track listing
looks like somebody has sat on
a keyboard, each number holds
special significance to Vernon.
His longtime friend Trevor Hagen
explains the origin of the album’s
title: “22 stands for Justin. The
number’s recurrence in his life
has become a meaningful pattern
through encounter and recognition.
A mile marker, a jersey number, a
bill total. The reflection of ‘2’ is his
identity bound up in duality: the
relationship he has with himself
and the relationship he has with
the rest of the world. 'A Million' is
the rest of the world: the millions
of people who we will never
know, the infinite and the endless,
everything outside one’s self that
makes you who you are. This other
side of Justin’s duality is the thing
that completes him and what he
searches for. 22, A Million is thus
part love letter, part final resting
place of two decades of searching
for self-understanding like a
religion.”
“Are you going to look for
confirmation?” Vernon howls in
the dramatic opener 22 (OVER
S ∞∞N), setting the tone of the
record’s struggle with the singer’s
self-confidence – something he
has always fought with. He has
said of the album's photoshoot: “I
felt very exposed,
with scarred skin
from the whole
experience. Not that
it was all bad, but it
wore down these
outer layers, and
everything kind of
hurt.”
In 10 d E A T h
b R E a s T and
the beautifully
understated
715 - CREEKS,
Vernon employs abrasive, glitchy
interference – to a point where
you’ll think your headphones are
cutting out – to portray where
beauty can be found in the ugly. It’s
Vernon employs abrasive, glitchy
interference to portray where beauty can
be found in the ugly
in these two tracks you can feel the
influence of long-time collaborator
Kanye West; it wasn’t that long
ago Bon Iver were releasing folk
tunes out of a shack in a Wisconsin
forest, but that shack still exerts
a constant force over Vernon – he
seems keen to return to it after his
irreversible struggles with fame
and self-worth.
Though some of the
numerological imprints on the
album are hard to decode, 33
“GOD” – a stand-out, featuring
Vernon’s breathtaking falsetto – is
a little simpler. Vernon started
writing the record, and this song in
particular, two years ago when he
was 33 – the age Jesus Christ is
said to have passed. The track has
the same spiritual undertones of
the rest of the record, but not once
does it come across as preachy –
quite the pleading,
searching opposite,
as he questions
where his God is
in a time of need.
29 #Strafford APTS
is the flawless,
angelic counter
to the earlier
self-deprecating
tracks, with Scott
Casey (drums)
accompanying
Vernon on vocal
duties. Similarly, 8
(circle) and 21 M◊◊NWATER are
Bon Iver showcasing their greatest
folk strengths with an otherwordly
twist.
To be fully appreciated, 22, A
Million should probably be listened
to in a cathedral – somewhere
huge and hollow where the sound
can completely embrace you.
Not since Radiohead’s Kid A or
Kanye West’s Yeezus have we
heard an album that disregards
your expectations while pulling
you closer to the artist’s intimate,
grand purpose. For all of the
production value and occasional
vocal modification, this is music at
its most raw: Holy yet sacrilegious,
grandiose while humble,
relentlessly vulnerable.
22, A Million
by Bon Iver is
out now via
Jagjaguwar/
Inertia.