On Justin Vernon’s new album, the indie hero revisited some old sounds before ultimately finding new peace and purpose in his music.
Story by Jedd Ferris | Photos by Graham Tolbert
To make the first three songs on Bon Iver’s new album, “SABLE, FABLE,” Justin Vernon went back to the woods. That’s to say the indie music hero decided to revisit the sparse acoustic sound from his long-running project’s 2007 breakout debut album, “For Emma, Forever Ago,” which Vernon recorded in an isolated cabin in a Wisconsin forest.
A standout from that opening trio of tunes, the gently finger-picked “S P E Y S I D E” (yes, Vernon loves to challenge grammar and spelling conventions with his song titles), finds the at-times enigmatic lyricist being direct and repentant in the opening lines, “I know now that I can’t make good, how I wish I could go back and put me where you stood.”
That regretful reflection, though, ultimately leads to a sunnier outlook. By the album’s fifth track, “Everything is Peaceful Love,” Vernon sounds enlightened, offering upbeat sentiments encased in a vibrant electro-pop-soul arrangement.
Vernon has always had a restless musical spirit and followed his emotional muse. He added horns, crashing drums and loud guitars to Bon Iver’s magnificent 2011 self-titled album and dabbled in digital experimentation in 2016’s “22, A Million.” He recorded “SABLE, fABLE,” Bon Iver’s fifth studio album, at his own April Base studio in Wisconsin. With help from collaborators Jim-E Stack and Daniel Haim, Vernon synthesized elements of his past sensibilities into what sounds like a full-circle culmination of his work leading Bon Iver.
Vernon, who’s collaborated with a range of artists including Taylor Swift and Travis Scott, has said he’s tired of touring and hinted, at times, that he feels Bon Iver has run its course. In “There’s a Rhythmn,” the slow-grooving penultimate track of “SABLE, fABLE,” he sings about possibilities, referencing a new relationship and leaving his native Wisconsin for a warmer California. If the project that made him famous is fading, at least he seems content.
