Bon Iver can take us to all of these places. And sometimes we need to hover in our indecision, in that ochre world, and accept some things will never find resolution. Sometimes, in sad or anxious moments, we need to retreat, submerge, look inwards. ![]() Throughout, i,i is self-aware but no longer introspective: Bon Iver face us head-on. There is a broad range of instrumentation: saxophone, brass and strings as well as piano, synth and guitar. “U (Man Like)” embraces the collective feel: it has classic Bon Iver overdubbed vocal but with voices other than his own. It is more declarative and confident than the murky and melancholic “Flume”, first track of For Emma, which had similar themes: “I am my mother’s only one / It’s enough”. “Hey, Ma”, is an emotive reflection on the mother-child relationship, telling the listener to “call your ma”. Vocals are not just heavily harmonised or overdubbed, but sung by choirs and groups. Perhaps what is newly distinctive about i,i, though, is its emphasis on community. Its stadium-filling proportions are reminiscent of those that began to emerge on Bon Iver in songs like “Beth/Rest”. “Naeem” is raw and full of drive, with call and response between the vocal and instrumental, and heavy drums that nod to Vernon’s previous collaborations with the Dessner brothers of The National. “” explores Vernon’s extraordinary vocal range, electronically layering recordings of his own voice in octaves before continuing in falsetto. But there is also a moment of blistering clarity, when Vernon sings in a low register an almost mundanely affectionate lyric: “I like you, I like you / And that ain’t nothing new”. On the first full track, “iMi”, a synthesised “shh” sound comes in waves the vocal is distorted and full of repetition, as Vernon sings “I am / I am / I am / I am / I am / I am / I am” until the meaning of the phrase degrades. Science and Technical Research and Development.Infrastructure Management - Transport, Utilities.Information Services, Statistics, Records, Archives.Information and Communications Technology.HR, Training and Organisational Development.Health - Medical and Nursing Management.Facility / Grounds Management and Maintenance.The whole record is slightly muffled, as though beneath a heavy layer of snow. It’s a record of wintry landscapes: a story now central to the band’s mythology is that Vernon wrote this album holed up in his father’s cabin in the woods, over three months of a Wisconsin winter. Vernon’s voice ranges from falsetto to baritone with formidable control – until it breaks with emotion on “Skinny Love”, the band’s most famous song. But his distinctive vocal is what lends For Emma its lasting impact. With his cryptic sadness, beard and plaid shirts, Vernon became a pin-up for late-2000s hipsterism: on For Emma, he sings songs of lost love backed mostly by an earthy acoustic guitar. Bon Iver (and Vernon as its frontman) have been a symbol of melancholic introspection since their first album For Emma, Forever Ago was released in 2008. ![]() Throughout their work, Bon Iver have broadened their horizons while staying fixed to their roots. Its large band makes the whole record feel communal, and it comes with an air of confidence. The new album is a realisation of settling into this sensation, and it demonstrates accumulated skill in melodic writing and expressiveness. Bon Iver’s music is known for its emotional impact, but its real beauty is in its ability to toe this line of tension between real and surreal, to embrace hovering on the edge. This ochre area is difficult to capture artistically, but something akin to it has afforded Bon Iver – the now decade-long music project from Wisconsin-born Justin Vernon – its enormous success, and is crystallised on new album i,i, a record released as a surprise digital drop today. It represents an ambivalent state: torn, anxious, not fully understanding an emotion’s provenance or if it’s real or imagined. The colour ochre, a deep, musty yellow, is vivid in its subtlety: not passionate red or gloomy blue. ![]() This image of Nicole – a character who straddles the border between reality and unreality, wellness and illness, object and subject and lover and patient – is no passing metaphor. The tattoo says simply “an ochre stitch” – pertaining to a description of the novel’s schizophrenic Nicole, “her yellow dress twisting through the crowd, an ochre stitch along the edge of reality and unreality”. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1934 novel Tender is the Night is tattooed on the ribcage of a close friend of mine.
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