Author: George Marsden

Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon is constantly thinking about an ex. He hasn’t said this publicly, much less told me himself. I simply infer the fact from his songs. “How can you know this?” you might ask, “it’s demonstrably not the case that every Bon Iver song is about lost love”. I know this because there has yet to be a single Bon Iver song that doesn’t feel like an exercise in rumination. Every track conjures the same mood of plangent meditation that comes over one when thinking about some long-ago romance or other; of memories mingled with the phantoms of futures that never happened, that can’t ever happen. You know the feeling you get when, at a party with close friends, the whisky bottle comes out and the conversation drops away; you sit listening to the music in a solitude so perfect you might as well be totally alone, and you… “get to thinking.” Right there—that’s where Justin Vernon wants you.

And this is, no doubt, an important place to be. But for the length of four whole albums? One finds oneself wishing for a shift in tone. If the above-mentioned party was at mine, it’s unlikely that the music you’d find yourself musing to would be Bon Iver for this very reason. If the music isn’t exactly monotonous, it has struck me as being in need of variation. I can appreciate the ornate instrumentation, and it hasn’t escaped my attention that, by mere dint of ascribing to their music such an easily articulable effect, I must somehow be charmed by it. But an aural palate cleanser wouldn’t go amiss.

So I can’t say I was thrilled to be reviewing SABLE/fABLE (Bon Iver’s fifth album to date). But, thanks to the good folks at Spotify, help was at hand. Going to play the album, I noticed that a sort of digital-equivalent of liner notes was floating about the page, which I have managed to find reproduced here. No, cynic, this didn’t spare me the need to listen to the album. But it did outline an arc that I knew the songs were attempting to conjure; a rise and fall that might aid towards experiencing some thematic variation. With this in mind, I began.

An album of two halves, SABLE/fABLE started life as an EP released last autumn that now stands as its first leg. True to its moniker, SABLE is a melancholy tale in three parts. ‘THINGS BEHIND THINGS BEHIND THINGS’ is typical Bon Iver fare: steel guitar skates alongside a plaintive voice that seems troubled with the results of (what else?) some reflective soul searching. In ‘S P E Y S I D E’ Vernon gets to show off his famous falsetto on what is the album’s most acoustic, and darkest, song. There’s some gentle violin, with a pronounced folk intonation, over the guitar and singing, but this is Bon Iver at their minimalist extreme as regards instrumentation; the better to help you fall deeper into the slough of despond that, one imagines, Vernon once found himself.

‘AWARDS SEASON’ opens in much the same fashion, the sombre falsetto complaining of the need to deal with pain alcoholically: “I can handle/ Way more than I can handle/ So I keep reaching for the handle/ To flood my heart”. But a new pattern emerges. There’s something like the approach of relief in the rising tone, a suggestion of the future a little less painful than the present (if only tentatively at this stage). And then: a saxophone solo. The black pool of the song’s first half and the two preceding tracks is momentarily troubled. It ends, and the dark mood is reasserted, but with a difference this time: joy is no longer hinted as potential, but as a fact.

We are thus set up for the optimism that characterises ‘Short Story’ and the following tracks. Such is the change that, as early as the second track on fABLE, Vernon’s joy has reached giddy heights. ‘Everything is Peaceful Love’ is helped along with a funk hook and a medley of synths; referring back to that arc, I’d say this represents the album’s emotional apex.

In fact, the optimism here seems to have been pushed to the point of naivety; I suspect, however, that this is deliberate. Understood as a statement of a man blinded by happiness, we might take ‘Everything is Peaceful Love’ to be in conversation with the more restrained ‘There’s A Rhythm’: whereas the earlier track exudes an unblemished positivity, the latter eschews dynamic instrumentation and tone shifts in order to adopt a more subdued approach. The album’s lyrical closer, ‘There’s a Rhythm’ exudes warmth while simultaneously recognising the necessity of pain, understood now as an element of a “rhythm” without which happiness itself cannot exist.

Despite myself, then, Bon Iver have managed to impress me. Maybe my admitting that a simplified programme helped me realise the album’s significance is evidence of an aesthetic limitation either in myself or in the music; why couldn’t the songs have simply conveyed their meaning unaided? But in the ear-pod age, it’s no mean thing for a musician to take extra-musical measures to prompt our concentration; we use music as a means of distracting us from the drudgery of chores and commuting and seldom spend time devoted solely to enjoying an album. I have been cold towards Bon Iver precisely because of this; I never just sat down and paid attention. In which case: find a quiet room, pour yourself a whisky (a Speyside malt, I suppose), and stick on SABLE/fABLE. You may be rewarded. But, for God’s sake, don’t text your ex.

George Marsden is a graduate of Glasgow University, where he read English and Classics. His writing has appeared in IM-1776, The Mallard, and Sublation Magazine, among other outlets. As song writing is the only form of modern poetic expression with a mass audience, George thinks it merits special critical attention. He also aims to counter the nefarious influence that Oasis have had on British culture. Read his work here.