Bon Iver “Sable”
After a decade chock full of “New Dylans” — some of them, like Springsteen and Petty, adored and apt comparisons, and some of them, like James Taylor and Cat Stevens, popular but pale comparisons — suddenly there were none. In 1979, Steve Forbert was not the last guy to be compared to Bob, but he might have been the last one burdened with the “New Dylan” tag. After Forbert, through the Eighties and part of the Nineties, the heavyweight crown was temporarily retired — there were simply no more “New Dylans.”
Eventually, the drought ended. Beginning in 1994, with the release of “Roman Candle,” Folk songs started pouring out of erstwhile Hardcore punk, Elliott Smith. Except, they were less folk songs and more diary entries. They were less Dylan-esqe and more Beatles-esque. Less political and more romantic. Nevertheless, Smith spent the next half decade whispering his way from the Portland underground to the height of Indie celebrity. And while he was no Bruce or Tom, he helped usher in a new generation of folk and folk-adjacent singer songwriters, who ranged from cultish (Will Oldham and Jeff Mangum) to countryish (Ryan Adams and Jeff Tweedy).
As much as he revitalized folk music, Elliott Smith changed it. And it was his version of Folk music — melodic but sad — that served as the loadstar for the next generation. Roughly a year after Smith released “Figure 8,” The Shins released “Oh, Inverted World.” And while The Shins were, in theory and onstage, a band, “they” were, in reality, just ‘him.” “Him” in this case, being James Mercer, who wrote the songs, sang the songs, produced the songs and, increasingly, played most of the instruments on the songs. Like Elliott Smith, Mercer made lilting but lovely, twenty-something sad guy music. Unlike Elliott, however, Mercer survived the sadness. In fact, he thrived in the sadness. With the help of Zach Braff’s intoxicating and intolerable film, “The Garden State,” and really with the help of Natalie Portman’s manic pixie dream girl turn, Mercer inherited the New New Dylan baton from Elliott Smith.
The apotheosis of the New New Dylan is, of course, Taylor Swift, who is both the opposite of a twenty-something sad boy, but also our greatest chronicler of twenty-something sad boys. Before Taylor, but right after James Mercer, we met Sufjan Stevens, who gilded the form with choirs and strings, and who was an indirect, if obvious, influence on “Evermore” and “Folklore.” There is no Sufjan without Dylan, and yet, by the time of Sufjan, Folk music had reached its progressive stage. Which meant that soon enough, and just like Rock and Roll, for Folk Music to go forward, it would first have to go back.
It would have to return to its roots. Back to Dylan’s midwest. Far from the city. To a cold and lonely place. A couple hundred miles south of Hibbings, Minnesota, past the western corner of Lake Superior. To a tiny, hunting shack in Dunn County, Wisconsin, where a depressed, immunocompromised, sparsely bearded, prematurely balding, recovering Indie Rocker had gone to clear his mind and lick his wounds. In that shack, in the winter of 2006, a twenty-five year old New New Dylan put it all together. The immediacy of baby Bob Dylan. The poetry of young Bob. The doomed sadness of Elliott Smith. The partly sunny romance of James Mercer. The withering heights of Sufjan Stevens. His name was Justin Vernon. He called his winter hunting shack project “Bon Iver.” And, before the Spring of 2007, nobody I knew had ever heard a thing about him.
All of which helps to explain why “For Emma, Forever Ago,” was such an unmitigated sensation. Released in the summer of 2007, Bon Iver’s debut came, quite literally, out of nowhere. Nobody knew who Justin Vernon was. Nobody could believe that this album — those songs — were made (ostensibly) by one, twenty-five year old guy, alone in his dad’s hunting shack in the middle of nowhere. But, simultaneously, it all made sense. If you started with Bob Dylan in Hibbings, Minnesota, and if traveled through time — through Nick Drake and Bruce and Elliott and James and Sufjan — you’d eventually land in Justin Vernon’s “good winter.”
This New New Dylan was necessarily Midwestern, like his spiritual grandfather, profoundly sad, in a MySpace, post-emo twenty-something kind of way, and intensely musical, in that Folk music is pop music kind of way. He had the voice and the heart of twenty-six year old young man but the face and body of a sixty-two year old. He looked not unlike a million Indie Rock guys you knew — unassuming, unshaven, unimpressive. However, in spite of that familiarity and the apparency of his influences, Justin Vernon sounded like no one else.
With the exception of the horns on “For Emma” (track eight) and the drums on “Flume’ (track one), Vernon played every single note on the album. It’s only nine songs — not even forty minutes long — but it’s a perfect nine songs. In fact, it’s so unrelentingly beautiful and lonely that the thought of one more song — of four more minutes — is almost more than anyone could tolerate. That it was a Pitchfork darling was no surprise. That it reached the top 100 on the Billboard sales charts was absolutely a surprise. That it went on to sell more than a million copies in the U.S. — that it was certified Platinum — was astonishing. For the next two years, at every twenty-something party in every caucasian, collegial apartment in America, you’d hear Justin Vernon’s feet tapping on wooden floorboards and his fingers picking their way off the bed and up to the sky. But, most of all, you’d hear that voice — alternately husky and heavenly. Broken but relatable one moment. And then unexpected falsetto — smoothed, clipped and layered — the next.
“For Emma, Forever Ago” is Vernon’s greatest triumph and his original sin. It changed many people’s lives, including — especially — Justin Vernon’s. It changed the fortunes of Secretly Canadian, the label & distributor that signed Bon Iver. And it changed the way twenty-somethings moped and how they romanticized that moping. Those nine songs sent Vernon around the worl. But also, and predictably, they sent him into a tailspin. By this point, it is beyond cliche and into the realm of axiom that the sophomore release which follows the freshman masterpiece is a slow, painful gestation. But in this particular case, the writer’s block was not simply a matter of pressure — it was a case of avoidance. Vernon did not want to return to the space of “For Emma” — the poor health, the long winter nights and the isolation. Understandably, he didn’t want to be the sad, lonely folk singer.
And so, over the next four years, he made a very wide turn away from the icy shack and towards a warmer, communal band (twelve musicians credited in all) sound that split the difference between Bruce Hornsby and Enya. Bon Iver’s self-titled second album was not so far from their debut — the falsetto, the husk, the patient builds and big reveals. But whereas “For Emma” was mostly guitar, bass and drums, “Bon Iver” was bursting with horns and strings. “For Emma” is the classic, but the follow-up was the Grammy winning, critics’ list topping validation. Moreover, it was Vernon’s escape — from solo sad sack to team triumph.
He never went back. Over the next decade, Vernon repeated the pattern — bigger, more ambitious projects, surrounded by collaborators — sprawling in every direction, except for the one that pointed back to that winter in Eau Claire. It’s not as though he forsook his hometown. Quite the opposite — Vernon remained in Eau Claire, established a local music festival (Eaux Claires) and became the poster boy for his home state's progressive reclamation. But musically he seemed interested in almost everything other than the desolation of that “solitaire hiver.”
For many years now, Justin Vernon has been as much (possibly more so) an in demand collaborator as he has been the front man for Bon Iver. In addition to recording with Volcano Choir and Big Red Machine, he has collaborated with everyone from (obviously) Taylor, to Zach Bryan to (less obviously) Travis Scott and Charlie xcx. Meanwhile, the music he made as Bon Iver continued to mutate and expand, incorporating elements of Hip Hop and experimental Pop music. Assembled through loops, glitches, horns, and more horns, the third and fourth Bon Iver albums resemble Madvillain and Dirty Projectors more than they do The Shins or Sufjan Stevens.
As Bon Iver evolved from loner in the shack to experimental Jam band, Justin Vernon became more diffuse — and more opaque. His voice was everywhere, but his songs were impossible to decipher. His career was simultaneously safe and unpredictable. He was Indie Rock canon verging on Pop canon, but one never knew when or if the next album would come. And one never knew what it might sound like — except that it wouldn’t sound like “For Emma, Forever Ago.” Justin Vernon was not going back.
Which is what makes “Sable” so astonishing. Just three songs (plus a twelve second prelude) and clocking in at twelve minutes, Bon Iver’s first EP since 2011’s “Blood Bank” wants to be a minor release. The material is not exactly new. All of the songs were written years earlier. Its cover is simply a coral pinkish square inside a black square — no text. There was no tour planned for 2024 and no dates announced for 2025. Streams for “Speyside,” the record’s centerpiece, are a fraction of a fraction of Bon Iver’s previous singles. And yet, “Sable” feels significant for several obvious, if unspoken, reasons. First, because Bon Iver is the opposite of prolific and so any new release is significant. Second, because the EP is spare and mostly acoustic, and because Vernon mostly eschews his falsetto in favor of his natural husk. But, most of all, because Vernon described the title as meaning “Mourning. Deepest black.” And because some of the material was written back in the woods of Wisconsin — implying that we are getting Vernon in his most natural state. That he did, in fact, go back.
Kind of. Sort of. But also not really. Yes, “Sable” is unadorned. Just six players (not counting the backing vocalists). Mostly acoustic. Lots of pedal steel. One song that is a synth hum and a couple saxophones away from a capella. “Sable” is immediate and threadbare in a way that suggests: “There he is! There’s the guy from “For Emma.”” Except that he’s not that guy. He’ll never be that guy again. That guy was twenty-something. He was alone, uncertain and unknown. This guy is forty-three. He’s famous. He’s been endlessly obsessed over. He can hide away in the woods, but he cannot disappear.
And so, consider “Sable” a reemergence. Or a reintroduction — to Justin Vernon in middle age. But it’s not a return. "Things Behind Things Behind Things," the EPs first (full) song, confirms as much. The finger-pickeing, the modal verses, the irregular pitter patter and the sky opening chorus all evoke pieces of “For Emma.” But there’s no falsetto. The vocals are mixed forward. Where once there was yearning, now there is confusion and malaise. This is not a young man pining. It’s a grown man (unsuccessfully) trying to clear his mind.
“Speyside,” the ostensible single, is as close as Bon Iver gets to “For Emma.” In truth, it only gets as far as “Blood Bank,” by way of Scotland (near the River Spey). However, if “Blood Bank” was small and empathetic, “Speyside” is vast and apologetic. Here, the falsettos are not a trick or a trope. They’re the strain of a grown man attempting to account for himself. Mistakes were made. Mistakes will be made again. The Scotch has loosened him up. It has sufficiently freed him to say the thing that young men struggle to say but that grown men necessarily arrive at: “I’m sorry.”
And then there’s “Awards Season,” the a capella tone poem that becomes a sad sax jam briefly and then fades into a liminal space between glimmer of hope and absolute hopelessness. As for what it’s really about, I obviously have no idea. As for what I think it’s about, I’d say that it sounds like two friends getting together from great distances, marveling by how much time has passed and how much things have changed, while simultaneously terrified that time will continue to pass and that things will continue to change — and how that is life’s beautiful constant and heartbreaking tragedy. It’s a late night, rosy cheeked, tired eyes, whiskey and weed conversation sung like a monologue. It’s the same guy from “For Emma, Forever Ago,” realizing that was forever ago.