Mix Tape: Good Winter

This post is long overdue. First, I waited a long time to pick up the album, until I could find the time and space to give it a proper listening. Then, I delayed writing this, not feeling I could do it all justice. But listening to the other kid fall asleep to his music just now made me realize now’s the time.

I won’t blame you if you don’t like Bon Iver. As much as I like him, I continue to be puzzled as to why he’s so popular. Start by taking a bunch of lumberjack guys and make them sing unison in falsetto, already you have what seems to be a recipe of disaster. Make them play synthesizers with tones we haven’t heard since the early 90s: that should only make matters worse, not better.

In one TV appearance, Jimmy Fallon compares Justin Vernon to Bruce Hornsby, to which Vernon more or less agrees. There’s an email sitting in my inbox in which a friend likened him to Steve Winwood. Watching him play backed by a saxophonist reminds me of Michael Bolton and Kenny G. These are not good comparisons. Nobody wants to relive these guys. (OK, I’m sure there are some middle-aged women out there who wouldn’t mind…only further proving my point.)

This is white-man’s R&B. This is music-nerd’s Easy Listening.

But judging by his success, I’m not the only one who agrees that, somehow, oddly enough, it just works, and works well.

How does a hairy, white, indie-music-nerd go from recording an album by himself in a cabin to singing backup for one of the biggest rap stars of our day just a few years later? How does a no-name experimental musician go from playing shows in living rooms to winning Grammys? Besides a whole lot of luck, I’d say the authenticity and a love for the craft help out quite a bit.

But there was something else that helped too, and that’s the legend surrounding the creation of his first album. You couldn’t hear anything about For Emma Forever Ago without hearing the story: broke up with girlfriend, went to cabin, alone, dead of winter, recorded this. It seemed to spin out of control like a giant game of whisper-down-the-alley. The story became bigger than the album, bigger than the man. It was indie legend. It sold the record.

But the main reason that legend worked was simply because of this often overlooked fact: that album sounded like a winter cabin. If he went to that cabin and recorded bubblegum pop songs, no one would have cared. But to create songs that sound so clearly and perfectly like their context, that’s when you’ve done something remarkable.

And in the end, that’s what gets me about Bon Iver. Lately I’ve been enjoying music that communicates a mood and an image. I don’t like your everyday rock band because their songs just sound like an everyday rock song. I like music that sounds like contentment, or hope, or melancholy, or a breezy summer day. When a song takes on texture, takes on atmosphere, takes on something much bigger than lyrics and a melody and a four-chord progression and a verse-chorus structure, that’s when I start noticing. And I guess that’s ultimately why I’ve noticed Bon Iver.

While the song “Holocene” deserves every single bit of attention it has gotten (listen to that rolling snare drum through headphones, would you?!), I’m choosing the album opener as a favorite.

 “Perth” from Bon Iver, Bon Iver.