Review Summary: SABLE was such a tease.
When Bon Iver released the 12 minute EP
SABLE in October of last year, I was extremely excited for a new full length. It harkened back to the early days of Bon Iver. It was a melancholic throwback to the raw, stripped down indie folk masterpieces that the first 2 albums are. Justin’s haunting crooning over bareback acoustics and a ghostlike atmosphere was welcomed with open arms by myself personally. There was a bit of nostalgia along with straight up stellar songwriting. Well...once I played through
fABLE just one time, all of that hype went out the window.
The 2 minute opener Short Story is the best thing about this album. It’s a warm, vibrant and atmospheric gospel sounding track that mixes Justin’s high pitched singing with some angelic female vocals. It makes you think that the rest of the album is going to follow suit, but sadly that isn’t the case. The very next track Everything is Peaceful love sounds like a cringey Frank Ocean ripoff. Walk Home follows and now we get to sounding like a dollar store version of Macy Gray with one of the most flaccid drum beats I’ve ever heard providing the “beat”. Are you guys picking up what I’m putting down? Every subsequent track is worse than the last. I’m not sure exactly what the guys were thinking while writing this album to be quite honest.
Most of the runtime is Bon Iver doing their best to emulate the indie rock version of Drake. The entire album sounds like Bon Iver going through an identity/midlife crisis. It’s as if they were trying to get with the times and decided to try and make things sound more “hip” and it blows up in their precious faces. Honestly this is more of them trying to make R&B/soul/hip-hop(ish) music and it’s just not their forte. To me, it comes off as trying way too hard and ultimately being embarrassing for it.
fABLE sounds like Bon Iver making music for white guys that always wanted to be down with black culture but just ended up making a fool of themselves.
Don’t get me wrong, there are a few nice acoustic pieces that are reminiscent of what they were going for on the EP, but they’re very few and far between. I thought Bon Iver was bringing the magic back. They’re so fantastic at making lofi indie folk music that I figured they were kind of heading back to their roots. I was completely wrong. But don’t think that’s THE reason why this reviewer doesn’t enjoy
fABLE. I don’t enjoy this album because it sounds completely inauthentic to me. Some people may enjoy this change in direction for Justin and company, but to me it comes off as try hard, cringey and like the boys are out of their league.
