Bon Iver Settles Into the Dark on '22, A Million'

Justin Vernon electrifies Bon Iver.

Bon Iver
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Bon Iver

Justin Vernon has always come across as a bit of a recluse. He famously disappeared into a cabin in the woods to write his first album as Bon Iver, For Emma, Forever Ago, a decade ago, and the image of him as a private figure who would rather keep trees as company has followed him around ever since. Though Bon Iver is not a solo venture and he keeps his Eau Claire, Wisconsin, brethren close, Vernon has been typecast as the solitary man, a curmudgeon at the age of 35 who just wants to make music and be left alone. 

On Bon Iver’s first album in five years, 22, A Million, the atmosphere is dark and removed, with familiar guitar and brass sounds mixing with fuzz and glitches. He veils his well-known falsetto in filters, putting distance between himself and the listener. Vernon has played with electronics and vocal effects before, but this is by far his most experimental record, and therefore might be his most off-putting. For a guy who broke out with the instrumentally sparse and vulnerable “Skinny Love,” his words and melodies in plain sight, he now feels so far away.

But this is still a Bon Iver record, and despite the push back against that more acoustic sound, Vernon retains his trademarks: the falsetto, the poetry that flips between oblique references and direct communications, and the gray day music. He might erase some of his earthy image with this project, but really he is just trading one isolated persona for another. In today’s world, the techie with a homemade computer is the new deep forest recluse, whether he’s the tweaked out, dark-hooded hacker, “somebody sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds,” or an artist making music alone on his laptop. Vernon is certainly challenging listeners with the electronic additions of 22, A Million, but he is not abandoning all he’s been and done before.

He might erase some of his earthy image with this project, but really he is just trading one isolated persona for another. In today’s world, the techie with a homemade computer is the new deep forest recluse.

In fact, instead of covering up the emotion in his music, the filters and effects amplify it. “It might be over soon” are the first words you hear on the album’s opener, “22 (OVER S∞∞N).” The voice belongs to Vernon, but it is pitched up and robotic, making the line sound like it came from some heartless killjoy on your shoulder whispering in your ear that nothing lasts forever.

According to an essay written by Vernon’s friend and former bandmate Trever Hagen about the album, Vernon recorded the words on a portable sampler while on his panic attack-inducing solo trip off the coast of Greece. He was in a bad place emotionally, crippled by the idea of life’s impermanence, and those are the words that came out. The line and the context are sad enough on their own, but the stark delivery turns the whole thing into a punch in the gut. 

These sobering moments of clarity dot the album, but Vernon spends the majority of his words lost in vague retellings of his past. Take “715 - CRΣΣKS.” In a voice split into pieces by a custom-made vocoder, with no other accompaniment, Vernon describes being outdoors by a creek and running into a heron. Then he moves indoors for “unrationed kissing on a night second to last,” and finally he closes with a command that might refer to the 1980s TV classic: “Goddamn, turn around now, you’re my A-Team.” The images are so precise, but the scene switching makes it hard to know exactly what you’re looking at.

The music jumps as well, from thunderous, staticky rhythm on “10dEAThbREasT⊠ ⊠” to delicate acoustic guitar on “29 #Strafford APTS.” But compared to the words (some of which are not even real, like “astuary king” on “8 (circle)”), the music clarifies Vernon’s ideas. He is in chaos in the jazz-like dissolve of “21 M♢♢N WATER,” calm on “8 (circle)” (the most traditional Bon Iver song of them all), and both on “33 “GOD”,” depending on whether you are in the piano-driven first half or the drum-crashing second. Those context clues might not give you the specificity you want, but at the very least, the instruments give you a more definitive outline of what is going on in his head.

At one point in Hagen’s piece about the album, he considers the personal nature of Vernon’s entire catalog of songs and asks, “How can this be relevant to someone else?” The truth is, this album might not be. For Emma and Bon Iver, Bon Iver contain comparatively straightforward thoughts and sounds, giving listeners an easier entry and things to point to and say, “I can relate to that.” Not so on 22, A Million. The way Vernon has framed his disillusionment is so specific to his experience that it will be hard for listeners to claim total ownership and understanding of these 10 songs.

The way Vernon has framed his disillusionment is so specific to his experience that it will be hard for listeners to claim total ownership and understanding of these 10 songs.

The music is still personal, only this time, it is personal without being open. Here, he exposes details of his life as nebulous thoughts thrown out into a hostile environment, an affront to the calm and approachable sound that defined Bon Iver up until this point. The success of the first two projects overwhelmed Vernon, leaving him exhausted, so it isn’t surprising that he would want to push away from the old sound, or even step back from making music as Bon Iver altogether, something he claimed to be doing back in a 2011 interview. “I look at it like a faucet,” he said. “I have to turn it off and walk away from it because so much of how that music comes together is subconscious or discovering.” 

He did manage to step away for a couple of years, but it seems that when his demons—anxiety, uncertainty about the future, fear of mortality—took over his mind, he had to exorcise them once again through his music. He recently said that though the process of making the album allowed him to heal, he knew he still had a ways to go. 22, A Million is the documentation of the early days of that disorienting journey. You won’t find resolution in these songs, only a reminder that sometimes you have to walk a while in the darkness to get to the light. 

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