Bon Iver
On their sophomore album, Bon Iver add just a touch of color to their stark indie folk, while retaining every bit of its intimacy. The haunting chill of solitude continues to cling to Justin Vernon\'s every word, even when his lilting falsetto radiates warmth over a rich bed of acoustic guitar, synths, and horns. The drama exudes from every little sound—the soft, pattering snare guiding \"Perth,\" the delicate whirrs of sax on \"Holocene,\" and the big, gleaming synths on \'80s-esque noir jam \"Beth / Rest.\"
Bon Iver, Bon Iver is Justin Vernon returning to former haunts with a new spirit. The reprises are there – solitude, quietude, hope and desperation compressed – but always a rhythm arises, a pulse vivified by gratitude and grace notes. The winter, the legend, has faded to just that, and this is the new momentary present. The icicles have dropped, rising up again as grass.
Justin's Vernon's project started out low-key and largely solo but has grown into an expansive and ambitious full-band affair with brilliant results.
To many Bon Iver fans, Justin Vernon will always be the plaid-clad mountain-man sensitivo stranded in wintry isolation in the Wisconsin wilderness. But as Bon Iver shows, there’s a gap between the image created by For Emma, Forever Ago—and its oft-told cabin-bound creation story—and Vernon’s new music, and it’s wide…
Not since a creek drank a cradle in 2002 had anyone so quietly overtaken the indie-music community as Justin Vernon did in 2008 with Bon Iver's For Emma, Forever Ago . That post-break-up album was drenched in the kind of sadness that feels a lot like joy. Rather than wallowing in loss, the music was a hopeful contrast to lyrics like "Saw death on a sunny snow." It was less like the end of a relationship and more like the promise of a new beginning. But it was only a beginning. Recorded in famous isolation, For Emma needed a band to reproduce it live. The Blood Bank EP followed, as did an o...
AllMusic provides comprehensive music info including reviews and biographies. Get recommendations for new music to listen to, stream or own.
Three years on, Vernon has returned with this ten-song second album under the Bon Iver guise, showing no signs of an artist under pressure.
When heartbreak caused Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon to retreat to the solitude of an isolated winter cabin, the result was 2008’s sublime debut album, ‘For Emma, Forever Ago’.
Bon Iver's second album is less wintry, less hurt but just as potent, writes <strong>Kitty Empire</strong>
Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon has come a long way since his curiously beautiful debut, For Emma, Forever Ago.
"I knew I was not magnificent," sings Justin Vernon. Oh, but you are, protests <strong>Maddy Costa</strong>
It seems fitting that Bon Iver’s second full-length should be eponymous; moreso than the apocrypha-burdened For Emma, Forever Ago or the spotty Blood Bank EP, Bon Iver shows Justin Vernon making bold, gargantuan strides toward fully realizing whatever it was that Bon Iver was intended to be.
Bon Iver - Bon Iver, Bon Iver review: Each song acts like a personal journal entry, documenting Justin Vernonâs experience back with the living.
Justin Vernon's second album consolidates his transition to major player with a degree of inventiveness and creative confidence that suggests there was nothing accidental about his original success. Rating: * * * *
The albums that work their way under your skin are few and far between. The second CD by Justin Vernon, aka Bon Iver, is one of those earworm-laden offerings that leave you wanting for more and haunted by seductive phrases and catchy tunes. There is something irresistible and addictive about the symphonic pop that Vernon has crafted as the follow-up to his crystalline exploration of lost love, For Emma, Forever Ago.