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. It incorporates the elements of electronica and surrealism that we saw on 22, A Million, but provides space for those currents to be grounded. Vernon has said it “feels very much like the most adult record, the most complete.” i,i deliberately embraces uncertainty. New album i,i feels like an amalgamation of all this previous work. 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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