i was prepared to really dislike justin vernon. there was the currently fashionable pseudonym, bon iver. there was the mythos: after a painful breakup, he'd retreated to some desolate spot in the wisconsin woods alone to write & record the album. there was the INSTANT buzz & youtube proliferation of live performances. there were those live idiosyncratic performances, stripped down & inspired but still bordering on oddball parody(THIS will be one of his problems moving on: how to keep the performances fresh). there was the music itself too. it didn't draw me in, not immediately. in fact, it seemed to do everything it could to shut me out & push me away. anyway, there was a lot to dislike.
then i saw the french video of bon iver doing "skinny love." then i downloaded the whole album. then i put it on my top albums of the year list.
most of my initial problems really didn't apply to the actual music. i could care less which of dylan's wives provoked "blood on the tracks." btw, a fashionable pseudonym, you say? try zimmerman next time, ok? once i'd cleared out most of the irrelevant issues preventing me from hearing the music, things got interesting.
the album is kind of a full-blown aesthetic system & as such entry into it is initially uncertain. being shut out/in & being pushed away are keys here, as is opening up & overcoming or emancipation. there are hushed beginnings that lead to crashing loud endings in many of the songs, like a lover remembering a good moment & then that thought leading to another & another & another each one less good. roland barthes' " a lover's discourse" argues that the heartsick lover makes gestures, "figures," that map out his world in a kind of aesthetic system. it gives coherence to the pain & in so do finally binds or relieves it. there's a lot of that happening on "for emma." while some of the figures barthes writes about are here(aceticism, affirmation,violence, etc), bon iver explores new ones(sly humor---in the music & the lyrics---is one major difference in barthes' lover & bon iver's).
the music is the setting for these various gestures. what at first feels insular & nearly static reveals upon listening a kind of organic quality. each primitive drumbeat, each muddled resonator note, each deeply echoed melody seem to escape from the cell of sadness & loss that heartsickness is. the way out of the cell("the unlocking")is simply living on through("everything that happens is from now on")& seeing that one thing("today is kumran") can change everything. w/it's stops & starts, it's surprizing drum & horn bursts that intrude on the quietness & then recede just as quickly, & w/that choral falsetto the music binds itself to the pain in the lyrics & gives it "the lift away."
this is an album to listen to alone w/o distractions. like a really fine bourbon, it's to be savored slowly. some music rewards us quickly & loudly. some music makes different demands on us. this need for quiet attention isn't anything new. i remember a long time ago stopping by marie's. i happened to look at the turntable on her stereo(i said it was a long time ago). she had a stack of leonard cohen albums on there. nothing else. "o, we've been in a good mood, i see," i joked. " you don't know," she said, " i might really have been in a good mood." this album will work that way too.
the blogotheque link is the french video of bon iver doing "skinny love." the youtube link is bon iver doing "skinny love" on letterman(who, i've been told, was slackjawed by the performance). either one should do the trick. enjoy
http://www.blogotheque.net/Bon-Iver,4255
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