SABLE, - Bon Iver
By: Aidan Monks
I’ve always thought labelling Bon Iver an indie folk band was reductive. Following the band’s last two albums, 22, A Million (2016) and i, i (2019), and frontman Justin Vernon’s subsidiary side ventures with artists like James Blake and Kanye West, whose post-dubstep and hip-hop styles influenced the band after their eponymous second record, defining the Bon Iver sound was met by the murky waters of genre melding: it became problematised. But in light of Sable (stylised SABLE,), their new EP released on 18th October, ambiguities of genre in the band’s latter discography have been practically washed away.
I doubt Bon Iver requires much of an introduction, but as introductions go, theirs is more interesting than most. Following a bout with glandular fever, a failed relationship, and a band break-up, Vernon’s retreat back home to Wisconsin in the winter of 2006 resulted in one of the greatest debut albums of the 21st century: For Emma, Forever Ago (2007). Written and recorded while Vernon was staying in his father’s cabin in Dunn County, stripped-back, folksy, acoustic – the roots recipe: a man and a guitar on themes of loss, loneliness, and the finitude of love – it was crafted with neither a producer or an engineer.
A tremendous amount of the album’s authenticity is due to its simplicity – an obvious point, perhaps, but worth stating – which allows for Vernon’s minimal and brooding lyrics to characterise the sonic surroundings. Imagine a dramatic performance where there is little to no scenic design, because every line delivered is worth ten times the artifice of a more mechanised stage. For Emma, Forever Ago is one of the most significant independent records of the century for its simplicity, but also, as Vernon liked reminding interviewers at the time, the fact that one artist could do it alone – without expensive studio equipment or the armada of instrumentalists, vocalists, editors, mixers, marketers – it could be done.
In many ways, the self-titled Bon Iver (2012) was a fulfilment of several key themes, leitmotifs, and techniques initiated in Vernon’s 2007 effort. The Grammy win for Best Alternative Album of the Year certainly speaks to this fact, as do the opinions of most respected music critics. By the time of the recording sessions at Wisconsin-based studio April Base, located approximately three miles from where Vernon grew up, Bon Iver had multiplied from a solo venture into the folk band the alt/indie collective has become known as. They gained Sean Carey, Michael Lewis, Matthew McCaughan, Andrew Fitzpatrick, and Jenn Wasner. Bon Iver was celebrated as a departure from the individualism of For Emma, and EP Blood Bank (2009), instead manufacturing a more polyphonic sound, and a fluid, collective creative feel – i.e., consulting the prolific bass saxophonist Colin Stetson, foregrounding his sound throughout the album, and applying distortion to add depth and texture to tracks like ‘Minnesota, WI’.
The production on Bon Iver was more sophisticated, and perhaps more compelling, due to the increased personnel – but this does not mean that Vernon relinquished creative control; in fact, his authoritarian style was the only factor which retained a sense of stylistic unity between releases. The same can be said for the band’s second two albums. As Bon Iver pawed from the empty spaces between folk and electronic and rock and ambient and hip-hop and post-dubstep, drawing on Vernon’s extra-band collaborations, their output became more experimental – musically and technologically. 22, A Million has been compared to the stunning left-turn of Radiohead’s Kid A. The production was bigger after the group’s hiatus and 2016 reunion, the instrumentals grew exponentially, layers of vocals, choral harmonies, distortion, and aesthetic autotune effecting a radical redefinition of what the Bon Iver sound is. As Vernon said in a recent interview for The New Yorker, the meaningful direction of the band’s focus was from himself (the Me of For Emma) to his personal relationships, or rather the existence of human beings outside the intimate confines of his own skull. You might consider this noble. Actually, any listener can tell that the ‘We’ of i, i was emblematically earned, not for its distinct sense of empathy, but because the selflessness Vernon was going for was already a foremost aspect of his earliest work: it was already mature, already searching for the catharsis to forgive.
Sable (2024) is – like Blood Bank (2009) – more a continuation of For Emma than anything. This means, all in all, the new EP is a return to the private, the all-too-personal, the ‘individual’ of the first album, including Vernon’s prominent and grassroot lyricism – i.e., the Bon Iver of ‘Skinny Love’. The lead single of the three featured tracks, which Vernon refers to as a “triptych” (a trilogy of paintings of which no one could stand alone), ‘S P E Y S I D E’ even sounds like a deleted cut, or B-side from the cabin-in-the-woods sessions of For Emma.
The three songs, recorded over 2020-2023 in April Base Studio, back in the vicinity of Vernon’s upbringing, display the archaic forms of songwriting, recording, producing, etc., which boosted Bon Iver onto the indie scene in the late 2000s: beautiful, old, skeletal, simple. What is left – with the layers of production stripped vehemently back thanks to producer Jim E-Stack allowing Vernon the space to breathe – is the same formula, if less potent, which made For Emma tick: rustic settings, lonely leitmotifs, and strained vocals which infer experience and the most desperate staples of longing. In other words, Sable is an unexpected return to the old fashioned roots which Bon Iver OG’s know and love, and possibly in anticipation of the band’s first album in five years.
Justin Vernon pitched Sable in his New Yorker interview as a trilogy of acceptances – of anxiety, guilt, and at last hope – which, while different from For Emma, which is ultimately less mature and does not begin with acceptance but culminates in it, evokes the vulnerabilities and laissez-faire frankness of the band’s debut - namely Vernon’s personal experiences, struggles, and his irrefutable capacity to put them to music. The blueprint for a great Bon Iver record is right there, in Vernon’s notepad, in his voice, and guitar. He has now gifted listeners with something more immediately personal and painfully real as Bon Iver, the band, has distributed in a decade – whether you enjoy the early records as much as the later ones – whether you care what a middle-aged folk artist has to say or not. The least we can do is listen.