Bon Iver
SABLE,
JAGJAGUWAR
One man’s cabin is another man’s penthouse. This has long been proven by Justin Vernon, a writer and producer of minimalist folk songs and collaborator to noted maximalists Taylor Swift and Kanye West. Forever known for his lonesome and wheezy vocals, quaint and handsomely burnished melodies, and overall rusty-scupper vibe, Vernon got a celebrated leg up working as part of Swift’s entourage for the COVID-era Folklore and Evermore (one would be hard-pressed to stay forlorn with her team’s money coming your way). Yet as Vernon states through his label’s fresh press notes, his new EP as Bon Iver, SABLE,, is an “unburdening” of sorts, a “process of healing,” and a chance to “unpack years of built-up darkness” from the “deep anxiety and constant pressure” of post-pandemic ennui.
It’s a sadness that’s all over the face of SABLE,, from its pensive, threadbare arrangements to its starkly poetic sense of woe and wonder, the feel of which suits the Bon Iver catalog like a wooly but moth-eaten sweater. “I know now that I can’t make good / How I wish I could / Go back and put me where you stood / Nothing’s really something / Now the whole thing’s soot,” sings Vernon across the high plains of the bare-boned “S P E Y S I D E.” To the strains of acoustic guitar and gentle violin, the track’s barely-there breathiness is reminiscent of Bon Iver’s 2007 debut, For Emma, Forever Ago. Seventeen years on, however, you can hear that Vernon has made an art form out of disappointment and despair, how he’s cocksure in his underconfident ways and glad to be unhappy.
Nowhere is that assured un-assuredness better displayed than on “Things Behind Things Behind Things” and “Awards Season.” On the former neo-folk ballad, a multi-layered Vernon and the quiet-storming pedal steel of Greg Leisz seek little more than escape from an unseen menace: “I would like the feeling gone,” Vernon low-moans through the song’s warily subsiding melody. The latter track, though, plays an opposites game with the listener. Sure, Vernon’s trademarked eerie falsetto (think Little Jimmy Scott in overalls rather than his tux) brings the dire straits along nicely. But the track’s cautiously building arrangement of saxophones, pedal steel, piano, and woodwinds move upward while Vernon’s lyrics do all that he can to stay afloat and drift happily to the shore. It’s not an easy journey, as Vernon sings, “I can handle way more than I can handle / So I keep reaching for the handle to flood my heart.”
Nearly thwarted by “the anvil,” Vernon places his faith in someone (“Then you came to me… We both needed so much soothing”), plays them a little Rickie Lee Jones (works every time), and becomes able to “live again” as “a new path gets laid.” And that’s it for SABLE,: three songs, one 12-second intro, a lot of mournfulness, a little bit of sunshine, and a swatch of Rickie Lee in the nick of time. Like everything Vernon does with Bon Iver, it’s a lot of back-and-forth emotion in a deceptively simple-seeming package, with his loss as our gain.
