Bon Iver – SABLE,

★★★★

Released October 18th, 2024 on Jagjaguwar Records

It’s a bit off-putting to do the math and realize that Bon Iver, the main vehicle for Justin Vernon’s solo work, hasn’t been the same for nearly ten years. When he became a sensation in 2009 it was on the back of an album of rustic, yearning indie folk songs that had been recorded in a supposedly haunted cabin in the remote wilds of Wisconsin. His big self-titled splash in 2011 was basically that but with bigger sounds, the orchestral version of that cabin in the woods. Then, from 2016 onward, Bon Iver became more pop-oriented, with an experimental bent. He named U2 among his new influences and I have to quote Art Brut here: “Why would you want to sound like U2? That doesn’t seem like a very cool thing to do.”

Both 22, A Million and I, I are solid albums, in their own way, but they lose track of what made people respond to Bon Iver in the first place. There is a weirdly large market for confessional indie folk that Vernon’s songwriting filled, but it wasn’t so large that it prevented him from becoming well-known. The market for experimental pop records is much larger. While his particular use of vocal Auto-Tune has given him some featured hooks in the hip hop community (especially with pre-crazy Kanye West) his exploratory sound has often left him feeling like a superstar in search of an audience.

The new Bon Iver EP, SABLE, is a return to form in this sense. That’s a dangerous phrase, of course, “return to form.” People often use it as a shorthand for “desperate attempt to regain sales figures”, which isn’t really the case as far as I know. I’ve never really looked into his sales, but I can’t imagine they are all that bad. What SABLE, really feels like is a way to process emotions in a comfortable, familiar way. They’re songs about loneliness, about failure, about relationships foundering on the reef of disappointment. They may not sound like they were recorded in a haunted cabin, but they do give the vibe that they might have been recorded in a haunted loft apartment, or maybe some kind of haunted but well-appointed room above a garage. It’s an immediately relatable sound for those who were there the first time around. I don’t know if it’s a sign of a direction or just a brief circling back to first principles, but it’s welcome all the same.

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