Bon Iver
Blood Bank EP
(Jagjaguwar, 2009)

For Emma, Forever Ago, Justin Vernon’s debut as Bon Iver, sure sounded like its backstory—a thin, shivery blanket of a record, just waiting for winter to roll back around. Which it did, as it always does, just as critics were preparing their Year-end Best-ofs. So aside from the nearly five-minute autotune experiment (which we’ll get to), Bon Iver’s new Blood Bank EP seems something of a don’t-you-forget-about-me deal, dropping as it does weeks after For Emma’s showing on everybody’s aforementioned list. (And, for that matter, after Vernon’s introduction to a wider audience courtesy The New Yorker’s Sasha Frere-Jones—who seems to have gotten off that “indie rock is too white” kick the way people stuff flip-flops into the back of the closet until the season changes again. Or the way indie fans have cycled back to flannel-clad dudes like Vernon and Fleet Foxes.) Appropriately, the opening title track picks up where For Emma left off months ago. Vernon’s in one-man-band mode, backing up his own multi-tracked vocals with mournful falsetto, and giving his world-weary guitar plenty of space, so notes seem to trail upwards into a starry sky—particularly in the song’s last minute, as strumming gives way to a distant-sounding solo and Vernon’s hushed, repeated insistence: “I know it well.” His are most definitely songs of experience.

And sometimes he sounds pretty worn out, like in “Beach Baby.” It’s mostly a sketch for a song: Vernon’s playing is hardly insistent; ditto the lyrics, which halfheartedly address a fleeing lover, and close with a devastatingly brief memory of sunnier days. The song keeps going on, wordlessly, for a minute after that, like a dying fall.

Summer comes back on “Babys”, it seems, if Vernon’s mantra-like repetition of “Summer comes… to multiply” is anything to go on; he keens over a repetitive piano melody seemingly created by Vernon bringing down all four fingers at once on the far right-hand side of the keyboard. It could, I guess, sound like ice melting to a highly suggestible listener.

But, okay, enough stalling, let’s talk about “Woods”, in which Vernon’s processing of his own voice reaches its (actually completely il)logical conclusion. No instrumentation, just multi-tracked falsetto and lots—like 808s and Heartbreak-level amounts—of autotune, repeating the rather cryptic, definitely introspective, “I’m up in the woods / I’m down on my mind / I’m building a still / To slow down time.”

Why, do you think, between Kanye’s emo-diary club record and now Bon Iver’s retreat to a secluded forest of the mind, that something as completely inorganic-sounding as autotune has become an acceptable route to introspection? My guess is that it’s something to do with the way it makes your voice sound like, well, not your voice. As such, an increasingly conflicted, schizoid rap celebrity and a breakup-nursing troubadour have filtered their voices through it, and found some kind of musical confirmation of their personal sense of disconnect. We’re all familiar with the story of Bon Iver—guy goes to woods to re-center himself through music—and “Woods”, with its synthetic howls, sounds like getting lost in order to, hopefully, be found. Which isn’t to say that “Woods” is successful as a standalone song—it’s not. It’s a throwaway experimental track on a filler EP. But it’s still valuable as a passkey to what’s maybe been going on in Vernon’s head as he makes Bon Iver’s music.

Listen: Various Tracks [at myspace.com]

Read more articles like this:

The Switchback: Solitude: Bon Iver vs. Henry David Thoreau

Introducing: Bon Iver Comes Out of the Woods

Album review: Horse Feathers, House With No Home