Front Page Reviews & AIR

i'm loving this album. hadn't heard it yet. thanks, mule!

"when there's music all around me and I haven't got a word to say" !!!

i've seen ryan adams many times, and i've also had this same feeling of intense musical immersion at his shows. i totally love him, and with Dylan I think he shares this talent for making something complex sound simple and easy. Songs like "Two" and "Harder Now That It's Over" and "Sweet Carolina" are like perfect acoustic slow songs, and then more upbeat songs like "Let it Ride" and "1974" are like chord-rock archetypes. i've felt it bigtime at his shows, and I totally respect others that feel it at Bon Iver's shows, too. It's one of the best feelings in the world. love it. Last time I felt it bigtime was at Jonsi's show last year. Fucking amazing show.

great discussion on Bon Iver. Thanks for all the cool ideas, guys!

One of the things all this has added up to for me is a recent realization: that the reason the ambiguity of Iver's lyrics amounts to a devalulation of the music in my mind (aka my "subjectivity") is that if I can't understand enough of the lyrics, I have trouble imagining the personality of the musician. Comparing him with Rivers Cuomo: "God damn you half-Japanese girls / do it to me every time!" or "I need to find some peeeeeaaaaace". For me, I think clear lyrics gives a sense of who the person is. To my mind, Cuomo is definately witty and funny, also open about what's going on in his life, and he communicates himself in the music lyrically. Or Bob Dylan, who we know is heartbroken, or talks about how time passes slowly, etc. Again, you get a sense of who Bob Dylan is, even if there's always a sliver of mystery about the person. This is true for all of us, I think, to a certain extent. E from the eels is another good example.

Who is Bon Iver, though? A white stoner dude from Wisconsin who knows how to write and produce songs that sound really really pretty. That's the extent of it, I guess. The rest is up to the imagination, and with Iver it seems to be more of a stretch - getting a sense of what he might be like - than say Cuomo or Dylan. It's hard to connect with "automatic bought the years....pennant tension ring..."

But maybe my perception of Cuomo is just as imaginary as others' perception of Iver? There's room for this. I've been wrong before.

anyhoo, peace duuuuuuuuudes!

Been listening to the album a lot in the last few days and thinking about this whole discussion. I think that's one of the great things about talks like this -- makes you think and consider new ideas. I'll say this. There is definitely something about Bon Iver that connects with people, and I think the idea that he can do it without straightforward lyrics (or, only at times) is really admirable, and similar to the landscapes that sigur ros paint. I do like the record, I always said that...I just like the first one better, and I'm always annoyed when the media (I won't say hype) misses the first offering, or when people flock to the new mysterious artist but don't really take the time to consider the beauty of the music that got him there.

I will also say that the subjectivity of all of this makes it difficult. Adam, Bon Iver is way up there for you -- definitely means something to you. I think that is awesome. I love when music can do that. For me, it depends on so much -- where I am when I hear it geographically even, mentally, what's going on in my life...for example, this morning on the way to work, slightly hungover, Holocene came on...and it was pretty magnificent, better than the last few times I've listened (I don't think all the songs are of that caliber, not yet anyway). It's a beautiful song, despite or because of, the lyrics (or lack thereof).

Speaking of that experience, I saw Ryan Adams last night. Fucking unreal. That was the experience for me. His set was pretty much as perfect as they come, and he was hilarious between sets. Opened with Sweet Carolina, and then played it again later because he thought he fucked it up. Awesome. He also made fun of his former self -- when the monitors didn't work right, he said years ago he would've blamed the audience and punched the speaker and left. Then he played Two, and it was as good as it gets. Also some Whiskeytown and Cold Roses gems. For me, the lyrics and the acoustic and the silence in the theater...was probably what some of you get from Bon Iver. And I get that. And it's fucking great.

comment...

A couple other albums I really dug this year that didn't get a mention here are Burst Apart by the Antlers and C'mon by Low. Worth checking out...

The new Roots record, undun, is pretty amazing......just dropped, so a little late for the early list scene, but this is a seriously good piece of work - I highly recommend checking it out

re: comparing Bon Iver to an experience of abstract art:

I don't think I'm "missing the point" at all. As you said, music isn't a "flat medium" like a painting. Thus, to appreciate it fully, I think appreciating and looking at all of it's elements is critical in the experience of it. Expecting Bon Iver's lyrics to make some kind of sense isn't too much to ask or expect, in my view. After all, why do people put lyrics into songs? To communicate something, one might assume. With a Pollock painting and other paintings that use colors with bizarre composition and no recognizable objects, the person looking at it brings their own meanings/associations (or no meanings or associations, depending on the person) to the painting. That's fine. That's what happens. No dispute here. But Bon Iver is writing lyrics to songs and using them as an element to his art. So I'm not "missing the point" in my approach to the song. The song confronts me with words, and I'm listening to them. He says "hold me with pops and clicks", which fails to communicate to a listening audience. I'm not saying that all music in all cases has to be understandable. That would be absurd. What I am saying is that Bon Iver consistently fails to use words in a comprehensible way on his album. I'm further saying that the comparison between the experience of abstract art and the experience of music with lyrics doesn't seem to be viable in the way it was described. I'm not "missing the point" of it. I'm more saying that Iver's point(s) are so elusive as to almost be considered just nonsense, like nobody edited any of it. "Michicant" is another really good example. "Missouri, WI" is another. What's he talking about in those songs? I can't figure it out.

yeah, i hear you, man. totally. i have another theory about BI, that there's some kind of identity mystique about him that fans and critics grab on to. maybe some people think he's some kind of mysterious, contemporary sage? not sure. i do think that identity politics (i.e. what people think a musician is and how they see themselves in relation to that person) do play a role in liking or disliking music. for sure. whether or not this is a prominent feature or in the quiet background of all the Bon Iver admiration is a matter for further discussion.

Thanks so much, Adam, for your response. Yes, that is super helpful. i like how you say that "vernon's obscurity is personal", and also how there's a "visceral impact" to the music, a la Sigor Ros and any other music that can't be understood lyrically. i totally feel that in listening to music i like in general, just feeling the vibes and feeling connected to that feeling. i agree with you and others that good music can be powerful and moving without being understood rationally. again, i like Bon Iver a lot.

I suppose the point in question is whether Bon Iver is or isn't writing high quality poetry a la T.S. Eliot. I just don't see it in his writing, as I've already said. Still, I agree that the "visceral impact" of the music is very beautiful (melodies, rhythms, his voice), and might remind people of other types of art, written or painted or performed, that also elevate us to "the still point of the turning world".

I listen to tons of instrumental music, so I don't feel I have to understand a song lyrically to like it. There are songs by Sigur Ros, Tortoise, Ratatat, Miles Davis, DJ Oh No, etc. that I love and are wordless. Also, remember the Amelie soundtrack - music by Yann Tiersen, and the soundtrack for Fantastic Mr. Fox, which had a lot of music by Alexandre Desplat? I LOVE that stuff.

On the topic of contemporary abstract art - that's a whole other can of worms. I wanna leave it alone, cause it opens up a lot of doors.

Thanks for reading! Hope all's well down south. Flagstaff, baby!!!!!! YEAH!!!!

Wow. 8 reviewers, 90+ albums (or songs) listed, and a mere 2 mentions of M83? For me, Hurry Up, We're Dreaming captivated my imagination and infected my conciousness like no other. It's ambitious, cohesive, and epically beautiful. Do you guys have something against perfectly crafted 80's pop? You didn't even review it!

Also, I realize the Foo Fighters aren't as hip as most of the other bands covered here (both highly commercial AND formulaic), but Wasting Light is kick-ass rock record.

Hey Matty,

I think these are all really valid questions.  And I don’t think it’s that you’re “missing something” as much as it is what you’re listening for.  There is definitely something really compelling about pop songs that come right out and say what they mean, directly and without any particular nuance or mystery.  They aren’t much work to listen to, and are therefore relatable for a wide audience.  And as far as I’m concerned, there’s nothing wrong with simple and direct pop songs – I think we’re all in the mood for something easy to understand and easily relatable sometimes.

But I don’t think that’s what Justin Vernon’s Bon Iver project is after.  I don’t think he’s necessarily writing pop songs.  And therefore, we shouldn’t expect the same things from a Bon Iver album that we expect from pop songs.  I think he’s after something altogether different; he seems to be working with a different artistic tradition in mind.  For instance, if you go to the MOMA (or even the top floor of the new American Wing at the Boston MFA), you’re going to encounter a lot of abstract art.  And I defy you to tell me what a Jackson Pollock painting “means.”  His work certainly has a visceral impact, but criticizing it because you don’t know what it “means” would be missing the point – right?  Just because he doesn’t spell it out like Michelangelo or Raphael doesn’t mean he’s not as good a painter.  Pollock is going for something completely different.

The same is true of a lot of modern poetry – even the more accessible stuff like Ginsberg or e.e. cummings or Kerouac.  I mean, I don’t know what Kerouac “means” when he says, “The wheel of the quivering meat conception turns in the void,” but at the same time, in the context of the entire poem, if you sit with it for a while, you start to get a hint of it.  And he’s getting at something a lot more nuanced and philosophical than Drake lyrics like, “Bitch, I’m the man.” 

There are time when literal uses of words fail to convey the entirety or the nuance of a given idea or concept.  As T.S. Eliot says in “Burnt Norton” from The Four Quartets:

Words strain,
Crack and sometimes break, under the burden,
Under the tension, slip, slide, perish,
Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place,
Will not stay still. Shrieking voices
Scoling, mocking, or merely chattering,
Always assail them.

And that’s why I love that Philip references the Quartets in relation to Bon Iver.  I think Vernon is working on that level.  I mean, reading through the Quartets and “getting” it all is a tall task.  Even the titles of the individual poems are abstract – “Little Gidding”, “Burnt Norton”, etc. However, most of Eliot’s obscure allusions are classical.  If you know enough about the Bible, Greco-Roman mythology, classical poetry, and geography (and have a dictionary and encyclopedia handy), you’re going to be able to get most of it if you work with it long enough.  But Vernon’s obscurity is personal – unless you know Vernon personally, there’s only so far you’re going to be able to go towards a complete understanding of what he’s talking about.  But I think that - to the extent that the human experience is universal and experiences are relatable - there is a visceral impact possible that requires very little in the way of specific understanding.  I don’t understand a lot of the lyrics in his songs, but at the same time they manage to hit me right in the gut, and I do feel like I “get” the emotion he’s after most of the time.

Also, unlike visual art or poetry, music is not a “flat” medium.  The lyrics are only part of the story; they are also informed by the music.  And the way they work together is essential to the experience of a given song or album.  For instance, Sigur Ros lyrics are in a made up language that Jonsi calls “hopelandic,” but is there any denying the emotional impact of Sigur Ros songs?  The lyrics don’t literally “make sense,” but how they sound and how they mesh with the music serves to convey the emotion of the whole pretty darn effectively.  And I think there’s a lot of that in Bon Iver as well.  Except that, as you point out, Bon Iver songs have those snippets thrown in that are exceedingly understandable, like “And at once I knew I was not magnificent.”  And because of the way they are set up by the music and the mood, they jump out and paint the other lyrics that surround them.  Bang!  The same is true of the opening lines of Michicant, “I was unafraid, I was a boy, I was a tender age.”  Those evocative lyrics paint everything else in the song.

Anyway, I know I’m rambling, so I’ll stop here.  But hopefully this is helpful.

Hope you are well Matty!

been thinking about Bon Iver, and the busiest days of my workweek are over, and now I can just sip coffee and write about my opinions about music. ahhhhhh. feels good.

so the thing is that i like Bon Iver, and have liked him since i heard his first album. i heard it for the first time in my friend's apartment. we were smoking cigs and listening to music and chatting. she put on "Skinny Love." I walked to the balcony and looked at the frozen lake. I felt arrested by the music, penetrated, overtaken with how simple and pretty it was. i liked a lot of the other songs on the first album, too. part of it's greatness for me was that it had a consistent timbre. the songs didn't vary too much in instrumentation or tone quality. it was like one big good 35 minute song. i like this about a lot of albums. they have a strong vibe and they can carry the listener along with it, beginning to end.

then like 4 years goes by.

then his new album comes out and it's also excellent. like the first one, most of the songs are very pretty. Like Sufjan, he can barely contain all the harmonies he's hearing. in Beth/Rest, for example, he emphasizes dominant notes in the melody, and surprises you by resolving in a lovely descent of the notes he just rose up from, ending on the 6th (f#) instead of the root (A). Cool. Iver messes with rhythms really well, too, often surprising you with quicker or slower chord changes. All of it comes together to create a very entrancing, tender sound, a sound I'd equate with the feeling of hugging a 2 year old. It's precious.

I love music that i can relate with lyrically, and I consider myself a reasonably intelligent person who can understand different types of word combinations. The thing is: i really don't know what Bon Iver's talking about in most of the songs. Take Holocene, for example. First off, what does "Holocene" mean? Not sure, guess I'll have to google it. But do I wanna have to google the names of people's songs? No. "Hinnom, Texas" Okay. Where's that and what happened there? If you listen to the song, you most likely won't learn about it because the words are super vague. In many of his tunes, Bon Iver's lyrics are unintelligible. In Holocene he says stuff like "jagged vacance". Vacance is a french word meaning 'vacation.' What is a 'jagged vacation,' and what could it even mean metaphorically? He also strings long phrases together without punctuation, such as in Hinnom, TX: "strangers scattering off nether passage in the wind off pennant tension ring". What was that, Justin? And from Holocene: "…we learned to celebrate automatic bought the years…" Ummmmmmm, okay. It seems like his trick is to say a bunch of shit that doesn't make any sense, then slip in a super profound, highly relatable insight or image (i.e. "I knew I was not magnificent", "there's a fire going out," "I could see for miles," etc). Just saw this stanza from Calgary, worth reproducing in full: "Don't you cherish me to sleep / Never keep your eyelids clipped / Hold me for pops and clicks / I was only for the father's crib." Huh? I can't understand this stuff, much less relate to it, so how could I love it?

I was having dinner with a friend last night. He said he's been digging the new Drake and the latest Kweli album. I asked what he liked about them. "They don't hold anything back. They talk about everything."

Rivers Cuomo, Bob Dylan - their poetic AND funny, angry, in love, disappointed, broken up, tired of sex, and intelligible all at once. An apt contrast to Iver's "poetry".

Am I missing something about Bon Iver, though? If so, what is it?

~love these tunes and videos~

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bz8iEJeh26E&ob=av3n

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWcyIpul8OE

Finally having my moment with Let England Shake. Hearing some old N.Cave and much more. Likin' that Murder video.

In the Bon Iver debate, I can only speak for myself. I was listening to the album and wrote my review before the album came out. Before I saw the P4k review or anything else. I simply approached it like any other album in that I really wanted it to be great. Usually I'm disappointed in that, but this one fulfilled it for me right off the back. And I said back then it would "most likely be the best album of the year". I know I didn't hear everything, but I didn't hear anything that changed that opinion...
I appreciate that Brian didn't really get into it, and that's totally fine. But the reason I did had nothing to do with the album's "hype". :)

post-script to my last comment: what i was confused about is the idea that "hype" somehow affected whether or not the album was excellent. i didn't interpret Sousa's comment as meaning that the album wasn't good, just that the "hype" - i.e. the anticipation and widespread acclaim - that Bon Iver got may have somewhat skewed it's place on these lists. Three people said it was the best of the year. I agree with Brian's implication, which i interpreted to mean that the album wasn't so mind-blowing to be rated so highly. Still, it was a fantastic album.

this is just my point of view. worth clarifying.

I should note that I did not contribute to this list because I honestly don't know enough about music in 2011 to make a list. thanks a lot to you guys that did. it's great to read about music i haven't heard yet. i'll def check out a lot of this stuff. grazie!

Vernon is excellent AND his record was hyped. He did a song with Kanye West, for chrissake. Is there any better way to indirectly promote yourself? There weren't posters in NYC about him, but blogs galore and for fans a lot of discussion/anticipation. I like him a lot, no doubt. The melodies are lovely, the production sounds cool, the songs are anything you'd want in a song, etc. He's excellent, but for me (my-totally-subjective-in-no-way- intended-to be-"truer"-than-others'-point of view) is that it just wasn't as gripping or striking as the first album. Why? I'll think about it and explain more when I'm not supposed to be working...

just listened to these 2 newish Black Keys tunes. so good it hurts. love it! the video for next girl is perfect.

once again, many list faves scored Grammy nods, including Wilco, MMJ, Adele (naturally), Jay-Z & Kanye, Fleet Foxes, and most notably 4 noms for Bon Iver - more fuel for the fire of Vernon's excellence or a higher heaping of hype? My vote is for the former....

Perhaps Dharma's description of The Twilight Singers' Dynamite Footsteps: "I gave it a shot and it ripped my hot tub in half." That description ripped my funny bone in half. DS!

I love the use of T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets in Philip's Bon Iver explanation. Comparisons between the two are apt - Vernon lives in that stratosphere on this album.

Sousa on Bon Iver: yes, totally.

Francis on Lykke: I'd like to take a turn after you. Let's distract Bjorn with a few cocktails.

Dharma: I too heart Adele. Her voice = the perfect piece of pizza. Have you heard her cover of Make You Feel My Love? AHHH!