the (second) Bon Iver album

Yeah, "Beth/Rest" is really something.

you guys rule.

Yeah, last track is so so great, love how the interlude before it leads it in too, after the already great Calgary.

I take it you got the link Bingo? :)

yes yes

of course i cant listen to it until i get home.

FUCK. SO GOOD. HOLOCENE is giving me a boner.

Gorgeous stuff. It doesn't quite haunt me the way For Emma did, but this is only my first listen.

The last half of this is really beautiful, almost baby making music.....

peter cetera?

maybe fields of gold?

very nice after I got over the 'wtf' factor. compare to last iron and wine album which is beyond fucking awful.

What are the lyrics to holocene, gorgeous. I think somewhere in there he says "you fucked a friend"

I can't stop listening to that song. It's hitting me hard

That is Peter cetera in Beth/rest. I'm waiting for Daniel lorusso to make love to ally

At first I was really shocked at how different this album is compared with For Emma, even Blood Bank, but the songs I liked at first listen I'm really loving and the songs I didn't like at first are growing on me. Beth/Rest even in it's 80's bedroom glow is my favorite. My girlfriend and I have listened to it repeatedly.

and made sweet sweet receda california love in shower costumes.

i've listened to this like 5 times in the past day so that must mean I love it.

lyrics posted for those who are into lyrics.

http://jagjaguwar.com/blog/2011/05/bon-iver-bon-iver-the-lyrics/

i've listened to to the new bon iver several times this morning, motivated by the same sort of experimental curiosity that brought me to the fleet foxes last week. prior to this moment, i've deliberately ignored both artists, kept away by the sense that their music belongs, somehow, to another tribe (where indie's concerned, i typically affiliate myself with grubbier punk/psych/noise). did like gayngs, tho.

anyway, this is beautiful, a vague shimmer of sound that reminds me more than anything else of grizzly bear's veckatimest - another lovely psychedelic pop album that can seem overly abstract at first. i say that because, for the all the time i've spent with bon iver, i can't remember a single song, can't even quote a lyric. i'd usually find fault in that, but the album clearly intends to get by more on mood than on hooks, and in this case, i'm willing to accept the tradeoff. there's absolutely no fire here, nothing raw, challenging or insistent, nothing to break the golden, narcotic haze of voice and instruments, and i imagine that people who depend on more violent musical enticements will reject it as boring, safe or unimaginative. it is safe, prizing a pillowy sort of sensual comfort over all else, but it goes awfully well with warm sun and slow hours.

can't imagine it'll go down as a favorite, but it strikes me as quite successful on its own terms.

I just discovered I have been mispronouncing this band's name

"Bon Scott"

i imagine that people who depend on more violent musical enticements will reject it as boring, safe or unimaginative. it is safe, prizing a pillowy sort of sensual comfort over all else, but it goes awfully well with warm sun and slow hours

Uh, what if you like both extremes?

Yeah, there aren't really any hooks here. Lotta nice sounds though.

i could do without Hinnom, TX. though.

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

Second LP left me completely cold; two listens thru the new one and I'm utterly blown away. One of the freshest approaches to music I've heard in some time.

Likewise. It'll be interesting to see what sort of stamina this album might possess but wow, I sure am reaching for it a lot this week.

this album is dumb

But is it performatively dumb?

"33 “GOD”"

(When we leave this room it's gone)
Is the company stalling?
We had what we wanted: your eyes
(When we leave this room it's gone)
With no word from the former
I'd be happy as hell, if you stayed for tea

Tour dates cancelled:

https://twitter.com/boniver/status/816645561126420480/photo/1

this album is seven years old now. i think it holds up as a classic.

especially calgary. like, come on.

dunno... calgary is indeed beautiful, the album art is gorgeous, sonically it's lovely, but the songs are just a bit too wet in parts. i reckon the last LP holds up better.

calgary, yes, beth/rest definitely

but overall found it a bit of a slog, overdone

classic sophomore syndrom, what came so easy on the first one sounds slightly forced/overthougt here

2 new songs.

I like Hey, Ma.

album i,i out August 30

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wU-s_Zxv_MQ

i really like "faith" out of the new songs

have loved all 4 of the new ones so far. U and Faith maybe above the others.

U (Man Like) > Faith > Hey, Ma > Jelmore

the album is out early and i'm really liking it on first listen - probably my favourite of his? a successful improvement on the samples-and-synths-everywhere sound of the last one which had some cool ideas but it felt too fragmented for it to really work that well overall. goes much further into sublime sophisti- (and i want to say kinda balearic in places) territory than his previous work too - "salem" and "sh'diah" are especially good.

Feel like some of the early over-praise for this is music over-correcting for the fact that they didn't call 22, A Million as being his best album by a distance.

*music critics

Yeah, perhaps. I repped for 22, A Million (even in this thread) but eventually for me, the live reworkings superceded the album versions. The December 2016 show at Pioneer Works seems the definitive listen these days. I'm still underwhelmed by the new record.

idk the critical praise for this seems pretty in line with the last two overall, maybe a little weaker if anything.

22, a million has some of his best work (particularly the middle section of "33 god"/"29 strafford apts"/"666") but as an album it doesn't work that well for me. it's very dense with ideas but doesn't really let them breathe, especially on the first two tracks. "45" and "00000 million" are pretty slight as songs too

Wore out For Emma, Forever Ago in response to a rough breakup back in 2008. I doubt I'll ever revisit it but it did what it had to most effectively. None of his subsequent records have held my attention.

Don’t care for this one at all; I did like the last one though. This just seems like a less interesting retread.

Good tip-off re that Pioneer Works show, Doug.

Curious to know how other Bon Iver fans received the Taylor Swift duet "Exile"

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

still sticking on 22, A Million on the reg

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.