Bon Iver

by Mark Beaumont

  Melic In The Naked

  APRIL 16, 2011, Palm Springs, Nevada. Lounging around the pool of a cul-de-sac bungalow with Ryan Olson, Har Mar Superstar and various members of Gayngs, enjoying the lull after headlining the Mojave Stage at the Coachella Valley Music And Arts Festival the previous night midway through Gayngs’ second bunch of live concerts*, Justin lifted his shades and welcomed a new face. A journalist flown out from the UK. It had begun.

  Having opened his album up to his fellow musicians, now it was time to open it up to the world.

  As before, Justin took an inclusive, hands-on approach to the press. He took Uncut‘s Alastair McKay – his visitor in Palm Springs – to his favourite local diner, King’s Highway, where the waitress sings show tunes, and chatted about the Gayngs shows (“With Gayngs I feel like I get to throw on sunglasses and fuck around”1), his habit of getting to bed at 9.30 p.m. for the duration of his time at Coachella and his nagging inner fanboy: “I was a bit star-struck when I saw Ian MacKaye at catering yesterday. It was like ‘oh shit, that guy’s my fucking hero’.”2

  Later he’d chuckle amiably to other writers about the two shows he’d play on the Sunday night at Coachella 2011, the first joining The National for ‘Terrible Love’ and the second an appearance hoisted high on a white cube pedestal in a white suit, swathed in pyrotechnics and surrounded by half-dressed feather-clad dancers as a guest at Kanye West’s G.O.O.D. Music headline set, with Kanye himself lowered onstage from a crane. “Sunday night at Coachella with just the 80,000 people watching us,” he said. “That was pretty wild.”3 “He knows my scene. He knows I can’t dance and shit. But I showed up and they were like ‘uh, you should probably put on some of these white clothes’.”4 “They gave me a bunch of white clothes and just said, ‘Go up there.’ It was surreal; it was cool to be a part of that big of a visual production but I’m not capable of constructing something like that for myself.”5

  To those who asked, he waxed lyrical about the first (and, to date, only) Volcano Choir shows in the US, in Minneapolis and Milwaukee that March, and about his reunion with DeYarmond Edison at Fader Fort at that year’s SXSW festival, their first show together in seven years. “This is our college band,” Justin had said as he and Megafaun took the stage to play only three songs – Bonnie Raitt’s ‘Lovers Will’, Carole King’s ‘You’ve Got A Friend’ and the DeYarmond original ‘Set Me Free’ – watched, bizarrely, by P Diddy from the side of the stage. Also at SXSW 2011, Justin had met rising UK post-dubstep/soul singer James Blake and got on like a shack ablaze, swapping emails over the spring about a potential collaboration.

  “You know when you’ve got good friends where you don’t see them for a while, but it’s kind of the same?” Blake said, “It kind of reminds me of somebody like that. We’ve talked about music and stuff and played together, it’s been quite nice.”6

  To the writers who came to interview him in Eau Claire that spring, Justin was even more accommodating. The New York Times’ Jon Caramanica was driven around Eau Claire in the Honda CR-V that Justin had borrowed from his mother, Justin taking him to the local meat market, Mike’s Star Market, to pick up the deer Gil had killed back in November 2010 and had stored there, all the while Vernon explaining how he was arranging his tour dates for the new album so that he wouldn’t be out of town and miss the hunting season. Spin’s reporter was taken to The Joynt and for pizza at Justin’s favourite Eau Claire restaurant, and granted access to April Base – cats, polaroid pinboard and all – where Bowerbirds and Kathleen Edwards were recording, Dan Spack was converting an upstairs room into an extra studio and the second Shouting Matches album was underway.*

  Chicago Time Out’s correspondent was given a guided tour of Eau Claire, from the favoured eateries of Pad Thai and The Nuke to the apartment in town Justin was now renting overlooking the Chippewa river, his home since April Base became too busy for him to have any personal space there, and the abandoned building he was planning to turn into a live music venue and study centre he was going to call Union College after a women’s college that had once stood on the same patch of ground. His interests as a local developer led him to an interest in local politics, finding an affinity with the ideas of ‘active rogue’ John Morgensen, an Eau Claire developer known for converting historic buildings into restaurants and apartments, as a means of achieving real change in Eau Claire. He saw himself, he told local magazine Volume One, as a similar sort of Eau Claire activist. “I believe that Eau Claire is such an opportunity. It represents ‘middle’ America in every way, and I want to think that isn’t a lost thing.”7 And Volume One knew just how active Justin was in local affairs since it was founded by Justin’s friend Nick Meyer and Justin had taken time out to help shift the magazine into its new office downtown, building shelves and installing himself into a spare room to make videos of Eau Claire graduation ceremonies or highlight compilations of local sport team successes. “Like if the high-school football team had their banquet, I would make a 45-minute film with highlights and put awesome music in it.”8

  He chatted about the phone call he’d had from Neil Young that spring requesting a collaboration he was trying to fit in, and the phone interview he’d conducted with Fugazi’s Ian MacKaye for Under The Radar magazine which had turned on another moral light: “I was asking him a bunch of questions, and long story short, he comes around and says, ‘I’m not an expansionist.’ I’ve thought about that word for the past three days, and thought that you can just choose to do what you want, versus what there is this magnetic pull in the industry for you to do. It’s not like somebody’s fault or some conspiracy. People just fall into knowing they should make money, and they do forget about a bunch of other stuff.”9 He grinned at the memory of playing on the Jimmy Fallon show in February, his first promo TV appearance for the new album booked so early that his band were still in rehearsal for the summer tour and he had no album tracks ready to play so, to a nationwide audience of millions, had to perform a ‘Calgary’ b-side and covers of Bonnie Raitt’s ‘I Can’t Make You Love Me’ and Donny Hathaway’s ‘A Song For You’ with Phil Cook on piano. He bemoaned the fact that he’d become a workaholic, unable to rest whenever he got home from tour; claimed that he finally felt he was discovering “my own zone” after years of “trying to spit out John Prine influences of whatever”10; enthused about the expansion of his live band to a nine-piece, one of whom was trombonist Reggie Pace whom Justin met while working with Megafaun, and explained his idea to only tour for four weeks at a time so as not to succumb to homesickness.

  “If I was going to decide exactly what I want to do, I’d play two shows a month for the rest of my life,” he said. “But making the record, that I would sign up for every time.”11 And, as usual, he gushed forth on the pleasures of rural living (“My house is next to farmers and I like being outside, splitting wood, mowing lawns or hauling shit around. But following a pattern for a pattern’s sake is like bad death for me.”12) and small town anonymity: “I can just be a person in this community and not really feel extra special or anything. I like going to The Joynt and Racy’s. I feel like a person there.”13

  “I think what’s even more rewarding then the ‘fame’ or whatever you want to call this that’s going on with him,” added his mother, Justine, “is the fact that he’s just Justin. I mean when we talk on the phone or when he’s at our house or it’s Christmas time, we’re all just the Vernon family hanging out.”14

  When Justin wasn’t answering flippant questions like who he’d still like to collaborate with (Bonnie Raitt and Tom Waits, since you ask) and what his Desert Island Disc would be (John Denver and The Muppets: A Christmas Together because: “What other disc could help you deal with the notion of death better in that situation!?”15), and was probed a little deeper, he was more intimate and open than ever. He admitted that fame and touring had lost him friendships, and even delved into his feelings of inadequacy at turning 30 that April. “I had just turned 30 and was dealing with a lot of self-deprecatio
n in the discreet comparison of other people,” he disclosed, “like when you think of what your parents were doing when they were 30. I was thinking, ‘Shit, I haven’t prepared’. But I realised I had done a lot, and the things like Kanye were other external compliments.”16

  But when the tapes began whirling, one topic was on every journalist’s lips. The new Bon Iver album.

  “For Emma … was this black and white thing,” he told Uncut, “it’s a record of an event in time, and it’s past, it’s forever ago. This is like the present – it feels more colourful and inviting … it’s a little bit like taking a drug.”17

  “I knew I had to search for the right album and let it come to the surface … this album really snuck up on me when I needed it,”18 he told Q, and expanded the point to The New York Times: “Those are the only 10 songs I wrote in the last three years, I had to go looking under rocks.”19 On the album’s lyrics, which he described as being “so unspecific that I’m not actually going to use words that have specific meanings”20 and even more about the sound of the words than on the first album, a technique inspired by ‘Loaded At The Wrong Door’ by Richard Buckner, he hinted “there’s finding love, not needing love, and then there’s sleeping with your buddy’s girlfriend … I’m not really asking you to hear what I’m saying too much, because I would have spoken the words harder … It was important for me to discard the storytelling aspect of it.”21

  “The music that has always resounded with me – and art as well – is when it feels a little bit like it’s coming from a person,” he expanded. “And it’s coming from a visceral place. A place that is maybe trying to explain something that isn’t explained yet. And I guess that’s what I was trying to do, and by trying to write songs in a subconscious way, I’ve ended up with something I’m pretty proud of that I didn’t know I was capable of doing … the songs on the new record, they all mean something to me. But they all can kind of change and trick me and trick people. Not ‘trick’. But the song isn’t trying to say something so obvious that it’s like law. Like all things, those kind of boundaries need to change.”22

  There were also clues that the real life pain behind the For Emma, Forever Ago songs had dragged on in the constant singing of them. “It’s such a weird thing: People sing sad songs and then they have to sing them all the time.”23

  “By no means am I in a race to be in some kind of genius list or anything,” he said, “but I think what’s important is trying to expand your palette and your ability to express things. And with this record I was like ‘I don’t need to be sad’. I mean, there’s some grieving on there, but it’s more like I’m grieving sadness. Like a ‘goodbye loneliness’-type thing. I’m not gonna invite that shit into my life if I don’t have to.”24

  Although the album had initially been rejected by his label when he first handed it in, claiming it didn’t sound professional enough, the remix the label did on the album wasn’t as good as Justin’s original mix, so he was justifiably proud of his achievement.

  “I’m not an egotistical person but I’m very proud of this new record I made,” he argued, “precisely because I did figure my stuff out, and I think the music is better as a result. Not to take away from the last one … I’m proud of that still, but it’s a different thing – it’s like black and white, charcoal-ash compared to this album where it feels I’m starting to use colour.”25

  And then, they asked, what of the title? The stuttering eponymy of Bon Iver, Bon Iver?*

  “It’s called Good Winter, Good Winter,” Justin said, “but it’s not about winter; we’re putting it out on the Summer Solstice – that’s sort of the beginning of life, of the longest life there is, you know. But it’s also wishing ‘good death’ to this place – this Bon Iver, Bon Iver. But this album is more about dealing with joy as it comes – inviting it in.”26

  “It’s almost like you’re saying ‘happy death, Bon Iver’ because you’re inviting change. You can look at winter a couple of different ways. You could see it as a metaphor for death or life, or as the end of an old cycle and giving in to the new cycle with spring. It’s meant to be ambiguous, because I didn’t want it to be boiled down to one single idea. I don’t think anything really can be.”27

  At first sight Bon Iver, Bon Iver would seem as wintry and isolated as its predecessor, coming adorned with a sleeve painted by Gregory Euclide of a wood cabin in a winter wilderness landscape made from real leaves, twigs, snow and dirt.† “[I’m] accepting winter is a big part of the album,” Justin said. “It’s the all-knowing thing, it’s more constant than sleep. Everyone deals with it and everyone is in it. It’s about what winter means, what everyone goes through, not just the season but the death of anything, the birth of anything. Winter equalises everybody. There are different classes of people, different types of people, but winter is the one thing that levelled off everyone I grew up with. There’s a certain resilience to Mid-western people. They like to complain about the winter but at the same time, they get through it and that is endearing and enduring … it forces you to have a certain humbleness. It doesn’t allow you to feel in control of much, especially from January to March.”28

  And in May 2011, Vernon would feel that lack of control sweep over him once more …

  Vernon couldn’t believe his bad luck; his fans couldn’t believe theirs had turned so good.

  May 23, a month ahead of Bon Iver, Bon Iver‘s official release date, a tiny square image of the album sleeve popped up unexpectedly on the iTunes store. Somewhere, an errant click had been made and Bon Iver’s second album was uploaded for sale to the massive online store a month early.

  The moment the error was spotted, Apple removed the album from sale. But it was too late. A “handful” of copies had been bought and downloaded before the gap could be plugged. The dreaded internet leak had begun.

  Aware of how regularly hotly anticipated albums find their way online before their official release, Justin was prepared for the eventuality. He immediately posted the lyrics to the album on the Bon Iver official website so that no-one would have any doubt as to what he was singing, and sat back to watch the reaction to Bon Iver, Bon Iver spread web-wide.

  The first thing that struck those who read the lyrics or managed to get hold of the music was that virtually all of the songs were named after places or buildings. “They’re not just places I have been,” Justin explained, “they’re about places in general and what they mean to different people, like an emotional place or a time. The meaning is open ended.”29 “All of these place names have a story or are the emblem for a feeling or a notion.”30

  The titles also gave the album a worldly and nostalgic air, suggesting Bon Iver, the project, had spread its wings, widened its horizons and expanded from the closeted wood-shack hideaway of its birth. And from the very first tune, the suspicion was realised.

  A geyser of electric guitar spurting from silence. A rumble of Union military drums and tapped drumstick marching rhythms. The distant choral drift of an approaching ghost army. ‘Perth’ – the song Justin had started way back in 2008, finding a rebirth of Bon Iver in the death of Heath Ledger – gradually emerged from the fog boasting grunge guitars, sleek shoegaze organs, trumpets and a spirited indie grandiosity worthy of Death Cab For Cutie or Band Of Horses. This was clearly a bolder, more confident and more ambitious Bon Iver than had made For Emma …, a statement of intent that this was Vernon reborn. “It starts out and it’s kind of disarming in ‘Perth’,” he said, “and by the time you get to the end you’re just kind of glad to be on the coast mode.”31

  Considering Justin’s claims that ‘Perth’ represented a birth not just in rhyme but as a messy beginning to the record, the hallucinatory lyrics seemed to revolve around the final line “you’re breaking your ground” as an indicator of new territory being explored, but were otherwise wilfully indecipherable, particularly since Vernon’s uploaded lyrics included (arguably intentional) typing errors: “I’m tearing acrost your face/Move dust to the light/To
fide your name/It’s something fane”. The image of “in a mother, out a moth”, however, suggested the kind of transformation and reinvention that Justin had been striving for with Bon Iver, Bon Iver and the line “I’m ridding all your stories” a casting off of the mythology of the cabin. But what lingered from the song was more of an emotional rejuvenation: “still alive, who you love”, not merely a reference to the memory of Heath Ledger living on in his video director’s thoughts but an admission that even in Justin’s once desolate heart, love was thriving once more.

  The lyric could also be read as a literal birth from the baby’s perspective, complete with baby-speak non-words like “fide” and “fane” in an opening verse that follows the child’s first blinking emergence into the world, trying to fathom the meaning of its own name, awestruck by dust moving through shards of light and “still alive” in a whole new wide-open space that feels like “this is not a place” compared to the enclosure of the womb. And if we were looking for a linear thread to the album, as with For Emma …, this is a fitting reading, since Justin has admitted that the second song, “Minnesota, WI’* is about his childhood, although whatever memories it held were tangled tightly in obscure cut-up word collages – “doubled in the toes annex it/It minute closed in the morning/Did not lose it in the stack’s stow/Imma lay that call back on ya”. A string of references to the natural world – “ramble in the roots”, “water’s running through the valley where we grew”, “laying in an open field”, “fall is coming soon, a new year for the moon”, “swallows swelling for the beams” – suggested that the tune could be Justin losing himself in incorporeal memories of his rural childhood. Certainly the saxophones that swept across the agitated Afro-funk verses – adding to the crystal-synth Eighties vibe that brought to mind the rolled white blazer sleeves of John Parr, Foreigner and Paul Simon and clashed marvellously with the serene banjo choruses – were reminiscent of his first jazz endeavours with Mount Vernon.