the (second) Bon Iver album

best thing about this record: when it ends, the next thing that comes up in itunes = flying squad edit of boney m's "night flight to venus"

^ hooks! beats! words!

eh, that sounded snarky/critical. didn't mean it that way. i just love boney m!

boney ver

A+

Lyrics read like Finnegan's Wake refrigerator magnet poetry

wife's thoughts on this dude -

"i thought "bon iver" was his name and he was some french/italian foreign guy and he was all *in* with the hip-hop crowd and doing experimental music, but he's just some lame folky indie guy with three groups [bon iver, volcano choir, gayngs]... sounds like elevator music, boring.... reminds me of the colors gray, white and tan... and other neutrals."

*makes THUMBS DOWN symbol in the air w/ hand*

"oh also, gayngs sounds like a group based around wham! "careless whisper".... so lame."

I've listened to this twice since last week. Lady Gaga has been occupying all my time.

A group based around wham! "careless whisper" !!!!

beth/rest is great. I'm getting some kind of 90's emo vibes from some tracks (especially the first) in an owls/ghosts and vodka way.

I have trained myself to not change "Calgary" on the iPod.

damn, "calgary" is the shit

i keep seeing snippets of lyrics and it makes me never want to listen to this, because this man seems like he is the single worst lyricist ever

9.5 on P4K

let's be honest...it could've been an album of morse code, and as long as it had the Bon Iver name on it that score was inevitable.

I still like this album btw. Don't listen to it often, but it's certainly good when I do.

Johnny OTM, he's one of PF's prime darlings.

Still, I fucking love this album, and think it totally warrants all the praise it gets.

i keep seeing snippets of lyrics and it makes me never want to listen to this, because this man seems like he is the single worst lyricist ever

vocals too. if it were someone else singing different words i'd be keen to buy into it, but ugh! that voice. ew! those lyrics.

Is there really a song on this that sounds like Africa? I might be tempted to actually listen then.

Nah, Toto yes, but not Africa. It's the last song, 'Beth/Rest'.

im w/ ledge, the vocals really put me off

trim your facial hair son, makes you look like a rapist

Vocals seem a bit more natural than say, Woods, but what I really fall for is his compositions. Never much of a listener to lyrics either.

9.5????

haven't heard the record but that's super high

this album is great! no clue what "9.5" means in the world of pitchfork people but i would recommend this album

in the world of pitchfork people 9.5 is terrible

I've said it before, I'll say it again, but the politics of small differences that surrounds the decimal points system used by PF is the single thing I hate most about internet music stuff. As if grades and grading weren't reductive and desultory enough without giving reams of asshole hipster pricks yet more fuel for their nasty little anal bullshit. I hate it. I fucking hate it. Even more than the everything-gets-three-stars-when-you-mark-out-of-five system. wtf does 9.5 MEAN? It means NOTHING. It's an expression of an opinion, but the decimal point makes it maths which makes it TRUE which makes it IMPORTANT. Fuck you, decimal point lovers, fuck you to death.

Argh.

Vent over.

Marry me, Nick <3

I listened to half of this last night and it sounded pretty amazing

I know next to nothing about Bon Iver, but this Onion headline made me lol:

Man Just Going To Grab Guitar And Old Four-Track, Go Out To Cabin In Woods, Make Shittiest Album Anyone's Ever Heard

This is like a soggy-potato-chip-mouthed chillwave Grizzly Bear....DO NOT LIKE.

Seriously, completely agree with you about the decimal point shenanigans, which is just challops.

It is a great, great album though.

Kind of an odd album for Pitchfork to feel they need to make a "statement" about

i keep seeing snippets of lyrics and it makes me never want to listen to this, because this man seems like he is the single worst lyricist ever

can't concur

Well, I met you at the blood bank
We were looking at the bags
Wondering if any of the colors
Matched any of the names we knew on the tags
You said, "See, look here, that's yours!
Stacked on top with your brother's
See how they resemble one another
Even in their plastic little covers"

from a strictly formal standpoint these are A+

wonder why pitchfork docked it half a point

lack of creativity on the album title

No Kanye guest spot

only thing worse than p4k decimal system is letting the p4k decimal system get to you

the decimal points DO matter though bc p4k knows they matter. ever since funeral, the score has held such an immense weight and they're so aware of it. they use grand scores as musical-political statements that don't really reflect the album at all (MBDTF MBDTF MBDTF MBDTF MBDTF MBDTF)

any album that score above like, a 9.2 is going to be met with groaning and eyerolls because pitchfork has set their system up so that NO new album could possibly be that good

but that album will proceed to become very, very popular

also high unemployment & anti-vaccine people

to sum up, list of things that are worse than p4k decimal system, ranked:
1. letting p4k decimal system get to you
2. high unemployment
3. anti-vaccine people

2 & 3 could be flipped idk

god help us if there's a war

4. war

list is closed now though I'm pretty sure that's it

no wait I take it back, brief reopening for final point on list
5. emerson, lake & palmer

i see you've come around somewhat to the "i miss you" video

5. emerson, lake & palmer

now THAT was a strictly formal A+

what did everyone think of his bonnie raitt cover/rework? shit was pretty moving imo

gotta admit i'm curious to hear this thing

what did everyone think of his bonnie raitt cover/rework? shit was pretty moving imo

I thought it was truly great - I mean, that song is a monument, start with that you'll have to work to go wrong, but he killed i

t

Not massively feeling the new S Carey, so far:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWvRRwJOfY4

Flagging this for my fellow Vernon fans: https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/deyarmond-edison-epoch/

Epoch begins with a dilemma. To explain why the avant-Americana quartet DeYarmond Edison is worth remembering, the box set would have to start with the recordings they made closer to the end of their mayfly lifespan. But to tell the whole story, it would have to start with Mount Vernon, their precociously professional teen band, whose songs, as the accompanying book gently concedes, may grate on the adult sensibilities at which this handsome shelf-buster is aimed. That they appear at the beginning anyway shows just how hard Epoch comes down on the side of storytelling. It’s a work of music journalism as much as a portfolio of songs, excavating how Justin Vernon, Joe Westerlund, and brothers Brad and Phil Cook grew up together in Wisconsin, rampantly evolved in North Carolina, and split off asymmetrically, with three of them earning modest acclaim as Megafaun and one earning Grammy awards and Taylor Swift guest spots as Bon Iver.

The box is divided into six chronological parts, beginning with All of Us Free, an LP that captures DeYarmond Edison taking shape in the late 1990s and early ’00s. The second LP, Silent Signs, reproduces their second album, which they recorded just before leaving Eau Claire. That Was Then consists of four CDs documenting the performances in which they dynamited their newly refined sound, and these discs form the messy, brilliant heart of the box and the band. The LP Epoch, Etc. is the sound of them breaking apart under the stress, and hazeltons is Vernon breaking out on his own. The set concludes with the LP Where We Belong, with an A-side of recrimination and a B-side of reconciliation.

Epoch was executive produced by Grayson Haver Currin, a Pitchfork contributor who also wrote the 114-page accompaniment, Time to Know. When DeYarmond Edison moved from the Chippewa Valley to the Southern capital of Raleigh in 2005, Haver Currin became a friend and fan, and the project is such a close study of their bond that it becomes a monument for friendship writ large—how it fits people together, changes them until they fit no more, and then, with patience, rejoins them at new seams.