Review Summary: "I cannot really post this..."
There are two distinct Bon Ivers. There’s the Bon Iver that’s been mythologized, the one that became the posterchild for the 2010s’ folk resurgence, the lonely Wisconsinite who, facing the world’s worst heartbreak, retreated to the Northern Woods and crafted a singular piece of work, one that came to redefine commercially viable folk and pop music for what feels like a generation. And then there’s 2011’s Bon Iver, Bon Iver as discount
Sufjan Stevens circa
Illinois. This incarnation of Bon Iver, while no less lyrically potent, was a decidedly more commercial and maximalist one. No arrangement was complete without half a parade’s worth of accompaniment. Now, 5 year post
Bon Iver, Bon Iver, and we have a brand new version of Bon Iver, one that defies the easy categorization of his earlier work. That is to say that the Bon Iver that lives in
22, A Million is Bon Iver refracted through those he influenced, a mirrored image echoing infinitely through a corridor.
Before I even attempt to unpack that obtuse description, let’s examine
22, A Million as an album. Sonically, the album inhabits the middle ground between the icy austerity of
James Blake-era James Blake and the post-rock experimentation of
Radiohead’s
Kid A. This precarious balance between beatific folk and overdriven glitchy electronica is best achieved on tracks like “10 d E A T h b R E a S T” and “33 ‘GOD’,” where Vernon allows the dynamics of the percussion to drive the tracks towards a satisfying climax. AutoTune and a vocoder choir are prerequisite inclusions for almost every track, making the ones that eschew them (“8 (circle)”) particularly poignant. “666” and “21 MN WATER” lean so far into Blake style electronic tinkering that they blast straight into
Oneohtrix Point Never territory, embodying the more experimental and inaccessible aspects of IDM. That’s far from a bad thing, but 30+ minutes of it could get trying for listeners hoping for another “Skinny Love” or “Holocene.” Luckily for them, for every “666 ʇ” there’s an “8 (circle)” or “29 #Strafford APTS” that harkens back to
For Emma… and the better parts of
Bon Iver, Bon Iver by stripping back the instrumentation and letting Vernon’s voice and lyrics fill the space.
Lyrically, Vernon is at his most obtuse and cryptic here. While never slipping into full incoherence, Vernon’s writing style has moved beyond the relatively relatable and mundane and entered Tori Amos territory, complete with a full-throated commitment to synthesizing the personal and the seraphic. “I’ve been caught in fire, what comes prior to,” he ponders on “____45_____.” The Biblical imagery and allusions are plentiful here, and instead of writing around them, I figured I’d provide a sampling of them for posterity’s sake.
“A womb, An empty robe, Enough”
“The path behind it, the path ahead”
“We find God and religions to, staying at the Ace Hotel, if the calm would allow, then I would just be floating to you now”
"If it’s harmed, it harmed me, it’ll harm me, I let it in.”
While far from immediate, this new intangible writing style suits the sonics well, and Vernon’s delivery is as full of soul as it’s even been. Thematically, the album deals largely with the intersection of time and place, and how dissonance between the two informs personal experiences. Vernon often colors this dissonance in the light of the divine as he tries to lend his personal experiences (intangible things) a tangible place, either temporally or physically. If that sounds lofty and recursive, that’s because it is, and the attempts to so closely cohere one’s own dysphoric experiences with some kind of narrative bely the inherent singularity of those experiences.
But that seems to largely be the point. In welcoming the listener into something so messy and aporic, Vernon immediately bridges the divide that was created by his jarring sonics and largely obtuse lyrics. Over the course of the album, Vernon emerges as a kind of Thom Yorke style recluse, so burdened and concerned with the machinations of the world that he allows his personal life to falter. “Why are you so far from saving me?” he pleads on “33 ‘GOD’,” as if all the talk of finding God and religion was a ploy, a masked cry for help. The lyric comes from Psalm 22 (22 seems to come up a lot on this album for some reason), wherein Jesus asks why God has forsaken him, and that same feeling of desperation comes through in the song’s final moments.
To say that
22, A Million is one of the year’s better albums is a given. But what’s more significant about
22, A Million is how breathtakingly profound it feels. Packed with lyrics and production that skirt easy explanation (listen…I tried) as well as a decidedly anti-commercial presentation, the album seems to be aimed squarely at the pantheon of genre-defining records that become regular fodder for thinkpieces and decade-capping lists. I won’t say that
22, A Million is a nearly perfect record in the way that
Lemonade or
The Colour In Anything are, but it’s definitely more bold and memorable. And that alone earns it full marks in my book.
