The tenth-anniversary reissue of indie-folk band Bon Iver’s sophomore record, the aptly titled Bon Iver, Bon Iver, presents yet another deviation from this trend. Considering the album’s focus on time and location — and the congruence between both — you could argue that this has always been its biggest draw.
“Records can take you to where you were — who you were — when you first listened to them,” fellow musician Phoebe Bridgers wrote in an introductory essay for the album’s reissue, which the band is celebrating with a tour that includes a stop at the FPL Solar Amphitheater at Bayfront Park on Friday, April 15. In fact, one of the most striking things about Bon Iver, Bon Iver is how it managed to evoke its themes of nostalgia even while sounding new-age at the time of its release.
Take, for example, the album’s second single, “Holocene.” The intro, composed of two unsynchronized sets of finger-picked guitars, is disorienting but has a pleasant, lulling effect. You barely notice that the track’s swelling instrumentals get louder and more invasive throughout the five-and-a-half-minute tune, making the its back half such an emotional powerhouse. By the end, “Holocene” sounds like an entirely different song. It’s grown from something minimalist to something far grander, transporting the listener on that same journey.
On the heels of 2008’s stripped-down For Emma, Forever Ago and the 2009 EP Blood Bank, 2012’s Bon Iver, Bon Iver marked a new musical direction for the band, with frontman Justin Vernon telling Rolling Stone he’d brought in new collaborators to “change the voice” of the project and his role as its leader. This included introducing a broader set of instruments into a lo-fi recording style.
This variety of instrumental textures is present throughout the record. Whereas “Hinnom, TX” takes an experimental tack, “Perth” and “Towers” develop into fuller, more orchestral sounds similar to “Holocene.” Meanwhile, the textured melodies of “Calgary,” “Lisbon, OH,” and “Beth/Rest” can be classified as chamber pop.
As evidenced by the tracklist, settings are also essential to the storytelling on Bon Iver, Bon Iver. Each song is titled after a different place, with each place having a special connection to Vernon and his collaborators. The history behind “Perth” is particularly interesting. According to Vernon, the idea for the song came to him while filming the music video for “Wolves” in 2008. The shoot was interrupted when the video’s director, Matt Amato, received the devastating news that his friend, actor Heath Ledger, had died. The song was titled after the city where Ledger was born.
“Perth has such a feeling of isolation, and also it rhymes with birth, and every song I ended up making after that just sort of drifted towards that theme, tying themselves to places and trying to explain what places are and what places aren’t,” Vernon told Rolling Stone.
The aforementioned “Holocene” recounts a painful breakup from a second-person point of view. In an interview with NPR, Vernon explained that the song’s title derives from a bar in Portland, Oregon — which also happens to be the name of our current geological epoch. It encapsulates the album’s many fixations on places, people, and time coming together to form something greater and taking comfort in the fact that our hardships are minuscule in the eyes of the universe.
“Our lives feel like these epochs, but really we are dust in the wind,” he told NPR’s Jess Gitner. “But I…
Read More: Things to Do in Miami: Bon Iver at FPL Solar Amphitheater April 15, 2022