The Good Winter

Bon Iver at Toronto's Sound Academy on August 8. (blogTO)

The first time I had heard of Bon Iver, I was sitting at my dorm room desk. There were Calculus 112 notes scattered everywhere (I was not looking at them), and a friend and I were chatting on MSN Messenger (remember that!) about new bands. I sent her some useless twee band. She sent me Bon Iver's For Emma, Forever Ago.

She told me that he seemed a bit too mellow for her taste, that she'd probably end up dropping the band. At the time, I had to agree. Justin Vernon makes the type of music where you have to actively sit and contemplate, be it on a foggy drive through the woods or when you're lamenting a love long gone.

Vernon's story is a tale as old as time (at least for Gen Y). As it is typically told, he found himself facing some troubling issues in his life - the dissolution of a band (DeYarmond Edison), a breakup with a girlfriend (presumably Emma) and a bout of mononucleosis - and sequestered himself to his father's cabin in backwoods Wisconsin for three months. This was Vernon's version of "soul-searching," a term typically associated with a year partying it up in Europe and unwittingly contracting several STIs. No, what came about here was the most beautiful, the most devastating of albums to come in a long time: For Emma, Forever Ago.

 He likes cats!

It was my passive soundtrack to last summer. It would come up on my iTunes Shuffle here and there. I had never listened to it sequentially before, so all I heard were little snapshots. Images of black crows and shattered veneer. The sad crooning of what I assumed to be a bearded man (I assumed correctly). The album sat in my iPod for a long time before I really paid any attention to it.

This seems to be the case with Bon Iver. He had been gaining momentum on the indie scene, but never before has his repertoire been like it is these days. Justin Vernon has built up the name Bon Iver with such notable items as a collaboration with Kanye West on My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy and appearances on Letterman and Jules Holland.

The new album Bon Iver, Bon Iver.

With the new release of Bon Iver's self-titled album, we can see that he is definitely a grower and not a show-er. This was a superficial joke my friends made about him, but it has much truth to it. Vernon doesn't seem to want to do anything to show off. In fact, his sweeping musical arrangements (like on "Perth") have nothing to do with showing off as much as they have to do with expressing what he feels - that was he feels is big and will envelop the listener as much as it envelops the one enduring that emotion.

(blogTO)

I went to his show at the Sound Academy in Toronto this past Monday. I won't able to do his performance justice. See, when I remember what happened at that show, I'll think about what it was like to stand in a still and heavy crowd, a place where it isn't so atypical to be less than ten inches away from a stranger's cheek. Vernon commented that they had "really packed us in there." And it's true. We were like that everywhere - on the bus from the subway, in line, and now engrossed in an audience who couldn't help but be mesmerized by a simple singer. It's this closeness that really identifies what Bon Iver is about. Justin Vernon has written about his darkest and most troubling times. In fact, the low-fi sound of For Emma is a key aspect that, yes, you could have this sung to you in a cabin in the backwoods of Wisconsin. Or through your headphones in the predawn light of a lonely bedroom. It's a sound that could be so easily lost in the cavernous venue that is the Sound Academy - a terrible choice for this kind of show. But Bon Iver, with the solo effort of "Flume" or the 4:10 all-out success "that's kinda about Canada", made it work. He really did.

To say the least, Bon Iver was the most-affecting and well-played show I've ever had the pleasure of attending. This was probably do in part to how I blatantly love him (can you tell?) but really, we should focus on the practical aspects. Formerly a single man on a stage with an acoustic guitar (an oft-seen sight for anyone who's frequented college open mics), Bon Iver has expanded to a nine-piece band. There was Justin Vernon alternating between an acoustic guitar, electric guitar, synthesizer and piano. He also had two mics in front of him, choosing one or the other depending on what vocal effect was needed. Along with him were the eight other musicians - guitars, violins, two (!) drum sets, clarinets, saxophones, trombone, trumpet - even a French horn for god's sake. This was a crappy venue, but the marvelous instrumentals and tight playing certainly made up for it.

Craning my neck the entire time (he wasn't kidding when he said it was packed), I caught glimpses of the entire thing. I didn't care. At shows for the musicians I've loved, I've always had the urge to dance and clap and generally make an asshat of myself. At Bon Iver I simply stood and listened, occasionally swaying with the surrounding people. I only needed to think, just as I do each time I listen to his music.