The Troublesome Beauty of Bon Iver

As mentioned previously on this blog, Bon Iver was Rough Trade’s #1 album of 2008. The other sticker on my CD cover shows that Uncut and Mojo both gave it five stars and proclaimed it ‘Album of the month’, while the quote from the Guardian makes the quasi-religious claim that ‘every moment not spent listening to the Bon Iver record has seemed wasted’. In short, Bon Iver has received the kind of plaudits that music critics only hand out to new artists about, oh, every couple of months or so.

Bon Iver’s first album ('For Emma, Forever Ago') is essentially the work of one man, Justin Vernon, who recorded it in a hunting cabin in Wisconsin over the winter of 2006-07. There is no denying that his voice is beautiful, the kind of voice that you would happily give your right arm and Xbox 360 for. Iron and Wine’s Samuel Beam is, I think, the most apt comparison (based on, like, a review I read and the one song I’ve downloaded that is by him), but Vernon’s vocals are even richer and more varied. They drift and resound in a high-pitched whispered croon, lifting up at various moments (most notably on ‘The Wolves’) to create an air of spine-tingling wonder. For much of the record, Bon Iver seems less like the work of a man than of a community (or at the least, a band of very talented vocalists).

But therein lies the problem – that voice is so beautiful, so overwhelming, that it becomes hard to remember what is actually said. When trying to write about this album, the only lyrics that I could clearly recall were ‘I am my mother’s only one’ (‘Flume’), ‘my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my’ (‘Skinny Love’), ‘what might have been lost’ (‘The Wolves’) and ‘would you really rush out’ (Blindsided’). And I still had to look up the liner notes to double-check those. No doubt some will say that the songs reward effort, that instant satisfaction is the domain of mindless pop singles, that you need time to discover the meaning of albums like these, and so on. But I’m sure that the young uni student who watches the regular guitarist on Thursday nights at the local bar would make those claims as well. Devotion can make for some rewarding experiences - some of the best you will ever have - but you do need the inclination for it.

All of which is not to say that you shouldn’t buy the record; after all, it does sound beautiful, and I think it would be the near-perfect soundtrack for lying in the park, or contemplating a lake. It’s just that it’s a particular type of record - it presents rather than moves, creating and inhabiting its own little space. Like a cool breeze in the forest, it’s pleasurable for the forty or so minutes it takes to listen to it, but then it moves on, leaving you calmer and more contented than you were before, but also, in a way… untouched.