#Bon iver 22 million song notes mac
Plenty of artists have made music in the image of mid-70s Fleetwood Mac over recent years, but on 10 d E A T h b R E a s T ⚄ ⚄, their influence takes on a very 21st-century form. It draws on the past not as something to slavishly imitate, but as source material to be warped and altered. You’re frequently struck not by the sense of a man smugly obfuscating with the aid of a laptop, but alive to the idea that, if you have the imagination, it’s possible to make a singer-songwriter album that isn’t in thrall to styles minted in the late 60s and 70s, but sounds entirely like a product of its time: fractured by technology, shifting and changing so restlessly, it’s often hard to keep tabs on exactly what’s happening, as open to the sonic innovations at the cutting edge of modern R&B or dance music as David Bowie was when he decamped to the US to avail himself of the Philadelphia International sound. There are certainly a couple of points where the listener might wonder if what they’re party to isn’t just the sound of someone faffing about – the combination of mannered vocals and synthesized saxophone on _45_ outstays its welcome – but they’re vastly outweighted by moments of real beauty: the lovely, effortless melody and stunning harmonies on which the impenetrable lyrics of 29 #Strafford APTS hang the unfettered loveliness of closer 00000 Million, a piano ballad lightly dusted with Auto-Tune and reverb until it sounds otherworldly the point in 21 M♢♢N WATER when Vernon’s voice pierces through the murky ambient drift that occupies its opening minute like a shaft of light.
But for all its undoubted oddness, what’s striking about the album is how straightforwardly enjoyable it is. Traditionally, the danger with that kind of thing is that it can look like haughty obscurity for obscurity’s sake, or, worse, wearyingly petulant. You can almost hear messageboard discussions sparking into life, and indeed getting gradually nuttier as he sings.Ģ2, A Million is obviously not the first confounding, how-do-you-like-me-now gesture offered up in rock history. “Darling don’t a failure fright, time’s the raker, and I’ll rack it up, I’m unorphaned in our northern light, dedicoding every demon.” Whether this is some kind of stream-of-consciousness attempt to express indefinable emotions he felt during the “horribleness” that preceded the album’s making, or just a concerted effort to try to stop people interpreting his lyrics is an interesting point, although you have to say that if it’s the latter, it’s probably doomed to failure. This often renders the words he is singing incomprehensible without the aid of a lyric sheet then again, even that doesn’t help much: “What I got is seen you trying, or take it down the old lanes round, fuckified, darling don’t make love, fight it, love, don’t fight it,” he sings on 10 d E A T h b R E a s T ⚄ ⚄. Vernon’s voice is frequently mangled with Auto-Tune and other electronic effects until it’s unrecognisable, which seems telling as well, given that he’s expressed a desire to play to audiences who’ve “hopefully never heard of us”. Then again, some people are just ill-equipped to cope with fame of any kind, and there was plenty of evidence of a man who has undergone some very real, heartrending distress since Bon Iver’s second album topped the US charts and catapulted him into arenas: panic attacks, anxiety, “mental stuff”, writer’s block, treatment for depression. There was talk of being pestered by fans: exemplifying this nerve-jangling state of affairs, the journalist witnessed a waitress tell him she loved his music while handing him his coffee. He now declines to show his face unobscured in photographs, presumably in an attempt to alleviate the terrifying level of ubiquity images of Justin Vernon from Bon Iver have attained in the world’s media: perhaps his pal Kanye West’s wife has become upset at being continually bumped from magazine covers in favour of Vernon’s beardy mush.
Sometimes he sounded like someone engaged in the traditional American alt-rock star’s pastime of laying it on a bit thick about the pressures of fame. Not for the first time, he talked wistfully about giving up music altogether – his “dream” is apparently to open a cafe – or vanishing from public. The man who is, to all intents and purposes, Bon Iver did not seem terribly happy with his lot in life. L ast week, the Guardian printed an interview with Justin Vernon.
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