Bon Iver

by Mark Beaumont

  Justin’s intended meaning for the song was secondary though: fan interpretations focused on the line “fall is coming soon, a new year for the moon and the Hmong here” and took from this the idea that the song was about the enforced relocation of 1.3 million Hmong people from their homes over the course of 17 years to make way for the building of the Three Gorges Dam in China, the world’s largest hydroelectric project, and the dam’s subsequent flooding – hence “water’s running through in the valley where we grew”. In this reading the Hmong were praised for their unbreakable nature*, but it’s unlikely that this one reference to the ethnic group was intended to encompass the whole lyric. Instead, the impression was of an idyllic childhood, the grounding of which was imbued with enough love to see Justin through whatever trials he might face afterwards.

  Thankfully, Justin has been more effusive on his thinking behind ‘Holocene’, the arpeggio slumber anthem loaning its guitar part from ‘Hazelton’ and named after the geological era that stretches from 11,500 years ago to the present. ‘Holocene’ wasn’t only the era the permafrost of the last ice age† receded and humanity thrived, however, but also a Portland bar where Justin had a “dark night of the soul”32, where perhaps he realised “I was not magnificent”, setting the humbled tone of awakening to one’s own failings and insignificance within the gargantuan sprawl of nature and humanity that shrouded the song. “Most of our lives feel like these epochs,” Justin said. “That’s kind of what that song’s about. ‘Once I knew I was not magnificent’. Our lives feel like these epochs, but really we are dust in the wind. But I think there’s a significance in that insignificance that I was trying to look at in that song.”33 “[It’s] a song about redemption and realising that you’re worth something; that you’re special and not special at the same time.”34

  Indeed ‘Holocene’ was also a reference to a shedding of frozen weight and a coming alive and, aside from the innate metaphor for springtime coming to free Wisconsin of its wintry shackles, Justin had a more personal defrosting in mind – the shift from his dour and depressed pre-Raleigh drinking days to his celebratory recent glories.

  “The whole second verse is about those years in Eau Claire but the first verse is this weird amalgamation of the darkness that came with those times,” he explained. “I set that verse in Milwaukee because it’s a dark, beer-drunk place … and guess what adults do on Halloween in Milwaukee? They get blind drunk and try to forget about their childhoods. We were going through ideas for a video for ‘Holocene’, and we thought it should be adults trick-or-treating where children are handing out their past dreams. Pretty dark. The last verse fast-forwards to two Christmases ago, spending time with Nate during an ice storm, smoking weed.”35

  Though he set his first verse of drinking his woes away one Halloween, mourning a break-up and realising how small and pathetic he was when he got too drunk to stand* in a fictional Milwaukee, ‘Holocene’ was dotted with real-life images. Come the second verse wistfully mourning the loss of a golden period living with his friends and being introduced to Tennessee rock troupe Lip Parade, the line “3rd and Lake it burned away, the hallway/Was where we learned to celebrate” referred to a house on 3rd Avenue and Lake Street in Eau Claire where the Cook brothers lived, possibly with Justin, and Amateur Love recorded – a house where Justin learned how to drink and which burnt down in 2010. And his final verse Christmas scene with Nate included the wincingly honest reference to “tangled spines” as the pair watched their troubles waft away into space like the smoke from their joint.

  By placing such personal recollections into the frame of someone acknowledging their essential unimportance in the universe, Justin did indeed find significance in the insignificance: that such tiny moments of such tiny creatures are intricately precious, moments to be treasured for their minuscule rarity, and illuminating them is the fine art of a pinpoint poet. The song would inspire reviewers to poetic heights themselves, the Pitchfork critic penning its entry at Number Two in their Singles Of 2011 list, writing “the rising and falling chord changes create a sense of motion that develops throughout the whole song, a tide-like ebb and flow that ends with an abrupt denouement, so swift it withholds almost as much pleasure as it yields”.36

  “This is about having three quarters of a bottle of wine in college,” Justin would introduce the next track on Bon Iver, Bon Iver live, “and well … you know what happens …”. He’d also mention drugs, Ritalin and losing your virginity. And taking into account that the song was named after the notorious UW-Eau Claire college halls where Justin first had sex it’s fair to assume there was a certain level of autobiography to the brisk, breezy ‘Towers’, with its jubilant combination of buoyant guitar, sleepy pedal steel, insouciant brass and “woah-oh-oh”s delivered with as much ecstasy as Justin’s falsetto could muster.

  It’s uncertain whether Justin was referring to his own virginity being lost or that of his Rapunzel-esque conquest whose hair he’d tear out in his excitement to re-scale the Towers and be with her again, but the song swam with the intoxication* of romance, desire and sexuality. This “young darling” whose “faun” of innocence was soon to be “forever gone” now she was “up for it before you’ve grown” inspired in Justin the most passionate physical desires – “Break the sailor’s table on your sacrum†” – and unquenchable ardour – “you’re standing on my sternum‡, don’t you climb down darling”. The “mischief” the girl brought to Justin’s life – and what Trever Hagen’s involvement in the whole scene was, since he got a mention: “Fuck the fiercest fables, I’m with Hagen” – can only be guessed at, but ‘Towers’ was testament to the powerful and confusing fervency that coursed through the teenage Vernon, and another blurred memory in Bon Iver, Bon Iver‘s fast-forward through a life.

  Many fans also read the aftermath of a lost virginity into the opening lines of ‘Michicant’ – “I was unafraid, I was a boy, I was a tender age/Melic** in the naked … know it wasn’t wedded love/4 long minutes end and it was over.”* But Justin’s onstage pronouncements that the song was about “all the things you can’t do in Michigan” suggested it was about either infidelity or seducing an unmarried girl.† Either way, the lyric hinted at coldness, distance and emotional struggles early on in the relationship – “the frost took up the eyes … pressed against the pane, could see the veins and there was poison out/Resting in a raze the inner claims I hadn’t breath to shake/Searching for an inner clout, may not take another bout … Hon, it wasn’t yet spring”. That the dolorous guitar, hazy horns, swooning strings and dislocated sound effects of electronic ricochets combined to create a mood most reminiscent of For Emma … was a sign, perhaps, that the desperation that bubbled to the surface on ‘Skinny Love’ hadn’t been completely purged during Bon Iver’s inexorable rise.

  Hinnom, in ancient Hebrew tradition, was a valley near Jerusalem where nameless strangers were buried and also the name given to the very gates of Hell, a land without laws. But in shifting this hallowed Hades to America’s southernmost state in ‘Hinnom, TX’, Justin re-imagined it as “a place to bury the stranger in yourself, a place to bury past selves”37. He filled the song with desert imagery, mentions of the ancient Hebrew law system Noachide and death itself as a metaphor for self-healing and self-awakening, a leaving behind of old lives just as Lucinda Williams did in ‘Fruits Of My Labor’.‡. Musically it certainly buried Bon Iver’s past; guitar free, it ventured into futuristic reverb-heavy synths and treated piano and juxtaposed Justin’s lower-toned natural singing voice against the falsetto, used exclusively for the choruses. So a husky Vernon looked back upon the decay of “bodies wrapped in white”, representing “every pain” and “pasts … slain”, watching with satisfaction as his old troubles sank into the sand, became imbued with dirt and ice and finally scattered to the wind, nothing but strangers. Meanwhile, a higher-register Justin looked forward to a life without such heavy cares: “solar peace/Well it swirls and sweeps/You just set it … armor down/On the wettest ground/No
t to vet it”. Here was Vernon moving on emotionally and musically, embracing all manner of possibilities in both spheres.

  The chiming, gorgeous piano lilt, lush strings and backwards notes like the dripping of icicles that formed ‘Wash.’ were further signs of advancement, Bon Iver stretching into orchestral tones and chamber textures, draped with graceful slide guitar. The title referred to the Eau Claire tradition of holding out through the brittle chills of March until the April showers wash away the winter ice, and Vernon used the emergence of nature’s life and abundance from “that iron ground” as spring takes hold as a metaphor for emerging from a period of cold emotional stasis when personal growth is impossible and coming alive again – “I’m growing the like quickening hues”. He addressed it almost as a letter of apology to Eau Claire for leaving it when, unbeknownst to him, he needed it most (“Claire, I was too sore for sight”), and allowed the lyric to become a Joycean jumble of words as though he’d become lyrically effervescent at the relief and pleasure of his own personal spring.

  Justin’s marriage ode to Kathleen Edwards, ‘Calgary’, was set to be the album’s first single on June 14, declaring Bon Iver’s bold departure from the acoustic musical structures of For Emma … with its ‘Hounds Of Love’-style amorphous pop pound, its haunting synth atmospheres and its cranky electric guitar squeals adding a mischievous edge to an otherwise silk-smooth song. “It’s like ‘yes! I am going to play guitar licks! Because that’s how good I feel!’” Justin exclaimed. “It’s saying goodbye to charcoal and hello to brighter colours.”38

  In the album’s loose biography of a life, having grown up, become educated, overcome an emotional slump and emerged a fuller, brighter, complete human being, ‘Calgary’* marked the point of becoming ready to settle down, albeit with someone you might not have necessarily met yet. “Eventually, you start waking up to the fact that you might be ready to spend your life with somebody,” Vernon said, “and still feel good about who you are and what kind of changes you’re going to go through no matter what.”39 But Justin wasn’t lured in by any simplistic myth of marital bliss; he knew that marriages had to be worked at. “I really like the opening line: ‘Don’t you cherish me to sleep’. There’s that whole thing that happens in relationships – you can love someone but, as soon as they stop loving you so unconditionally that they stop being themselves, it can be so dangerous.”40

  So amidst the language of infatuation – the lustful lingerings on his potential fiancee’s “hair, old, long along/Your neck onto your shoulder-blades”, his feeling that she “pinned me with your black sphere eyes” and his calling her his “starboard bride” – Justin imagined in this possibly future marriage hints of insecurity and neglect, that he was little more to her than a means to parenthood (“I was only for the father’s crib”), a security blanket (“I was only for your very space”) and an escape from lifelong loneliness (“I was only for to die beside”).

  As the electric guitars bled into more turbulent frequencies the song’s bridge traced more troubled times in this future couple’s life together –having got along by knowing they “just have to keep a dialogue”, a metaphorical storm “on the lake” almost finishes their love off: “little waves, our bodies break … there’s a fire going out/But there’s really nothing to the south”.* But as the storm subsides and the protagonist wakes up still dedicated to his “starboard bride” – “sold, I’m ever open ears and open eyes” –the closing moral is that a stout marriage can weather any rough patches: “the demons come, they can subside”. As love songs go, the unflinching realism made ‘Calgary’ all the more touching.

  ‘Calgary’ was released accompanied by a theatrical video, directed by Andre Durand and Dan Huiting and filmed largely outside Justin’s pole barn at April Base, wherein sperm-like white shapes floated towards an egg-like bed, birthing a woman who eventually emerged from a womb-like cave and met a man with similar stains on his skin; the couple then picked their way through a tangled woodland to cast burning coals out onto a lake together. The final symbolism of a bear rising out of a grave upside down was left wide open to the viewer’s interpretation, but in general the promo was an artful modernist take on ‘Calgary”s trepidatiously-ever-after.

  After 93 seconds of modulating ambient drone, random bleeps and backwards guitar called ‘Lisbon, OH’, Bon Iver, Bon Iver ends with the death to ‘Perth”s birth. ‘Beth/Rest’* didn’t just lay to rest Bon Iver’s high-pitched acoustic roots – drenched, as it was, in Bruce Hornsby brass, Dire Straits guitar licks, the Eighties AOR Korg M1 synths of Phil Collins or Sting and sampled electronic vocals in lower register – and represent the knell of the album’s life cycle, it found Vernon singing, with immense joy and emancipation, of the demise of his insecurities.

  “It’s about inviting love into your life and not being afraid,” he said. “People run away from relationships because they’re afraid of losing their independence. It doesn’t have to be that way. For me it’s about trying to get rid of the insecurity that caused me to think those things. There’s a death in that, but it’s beautiful. It’s like I’m saying goodbye to the days of dread, and the reasons I had to make For Emma…. It was self-referential, it was self-loathing. It was important, I guess, but you don’t have to be afraid of linking up with another person and having faith that they’re not going to try to change who you are. That’s the ‘rest’ part. I’m talking about true love, I’d given up on it.”41

  For just such reasons, Vernon admitted weeping while working on ‘Beth/Rest’, so pleased he’d been able to communicate something uncomplicated and innocent but full of personal meaning, albeit largely impenetrable from an outside listener’s perspective. “I’m the most proud of that song,” he said. “It’s definitely the part where you pick up your joint and re-light it.”42 “‘Perth’ is this awakening or this birth … it’s sort of that moment when you have decided to wake up and take control. And ‘Beth/Rest’ is the death, but it’s a good death. It’s good winter. But it’s a rest; it’s not this final thing … what’s weird is that the record was imagined before any of this new personal relationship stuff had happened. I’m in a really good, loving relationship right now. It’s really rewarding. But what’s weird is that the songs kind of came as this predecessor, as an invitation, to tell myself that I was open to it and knowing that there wasn’t going to be somebody coming along who’s going to change me and want to change who I was. And they were going to let me be who I want to be and like me for it. Then it sort of just happened as soon as I finished writing the song.”43

  “That song feels really honest to me,” he’d say. “It’s embracing that digital analogue pad sound I actually find really useful when listening to music, whether it’s Prince or Bruce Hornsby. I wanted to go there. And I wasn’t afraid to play a guitar lick. I didn’t want anyone to think I was jerking around. The song’s about letting go of the love of 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.”44

  He’d come in for criticism from hardcore For Emma … fans for the Eighties production values on ‘Beth/Rest’, but remained stoical and unrepentant. “During this whole process, I was like, whatever feels good is just right. Gayngs definitely helped with that. It doesn’t have anything to do with irony. Those sounds – they just feel so good to me. It’s like a song I would have written when I was 18.”45

  “People are latching onto that one because it seems like a statement,” he’d say, “or it might seem like I’m trying to pull the wool over somebody’s eyes, or they’re just plain not into keyboard sounds like that. And I don’t feel defensive about it. For me, I didn’t think about it that much when I made that song. When I made it, I was like, ‘I love this song. I really needed to write this song. And I need it to be last on this record’ … it just sounds like forever. It’s kind of timeless, and you can be lofted up into these very high places during that song … I don’t blame people for having their opinions, like,
‘It sounds like Steve Winwood.’ But I think for me, it’s kind of silly to judge something based on some production facility. It’s my favourite song. It’s the last thing I want you to go away with. It’s innocent. And I don’t want it to be some Eighties throwback song. I want it to be a current, I-get-lost-in-this song, and I love everything about it … It’s just happy, and I want to play this song all the time. ‘Beth/Rest’ was more just for that certain someone, you know.”46

  Online analysts of ‘Beth/Rest”s particularly obscure and unfathomable lyrics would pick out a story similar to that of ‘Calgary’, only more realised than imagined – a married couple whose “star” of love had lost heat and allowed rain to waterlog their relationship’s “vessel”. Though the struggle to repair their problems was often arduous – “it is steep, it is stone/Such recovery” – and their love “heavy-mitted”*, ultimately their bond of marriage would see off dangers and allow them the rest of the title, a scene of settling in and with ‘Beth’, the death of life’s emotional fluctuations.

  And so closed a challenging, surprising, brave and boundary-breaking follow-up to one of the alt.folk albums of the century. An album, in fact, that instantly distanced Vernon from the bearded-folkie tradition he’d seemed to epitomise on For Emma …, made the likes of Iron & Wine and Bonnie Prince Billy seem woefully traditionalist by comparison and proved Vernon an artist with far greater sonic ambitions, as adventurous in musical spirit as Fleet Foxes, Sufjan or Modest Mouse, and willing to take on board an ounce of the psychedelic futurism of Animal Collective or MGMT.

  When they first heard Bon Iver, Bon Iver, those close to Vernon heard all of his potential realised. “When I first heard it,” said Frenette, “I knew it was the album he was supposed to make and I was blown away.”47 “[It was] a lot to take in on the first listen,” said Ed Horrox, who’d heard no music at all from the Vernon camp until the completed album was delivered to 4AD, “very expansive, big, deep, wide, detailed. A beautiful, beautiful thing. It was pretty mind-blowing. I didn’t really have a hope [for what I wanted to hear], I just knew whatever was going to come was going to be very special. Because the music he’d made and released as Bon Iver, there were many different places, there was sonic experimentation and detail and there was great songwriting, sometimes there was simplicity, sometimes there was complexity – on For Emma … there was all of that and obviously there were the side projects. So there were so many possible roads he could’ve gone down, I didn’t know what he was going to do.”