the (second) Bon Iver album

Ahh so Justin finally listened to that copy of Age of Adz he had lying around

― you think Lou Bega gave up after Mambo Number One??? (voodoo chili), Wednesday, August 17, 2016 2:48 PM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is so otm lol
i like these songs a lot. never listened to the 2011 record. haven't really paid attention since for emma, this new shit is wild, didn't really see it coming at all...
http://pitchfork.com/news/67876-bon-iver-share-new-song-33-god-listen/

33 God is pretty good. the main things different from the last album are the programmed drums & samples floating about. the 80s soft rock at the core of these are basically what the last album was

wow this is stunning

Not my thing, these two new tracks. Perhaps in the context of an album I'll enjoy them more. I remember loving the first single off the s/t and then disliking the record a great deal, so heh, who knows.

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.

this is pretty good

i could do without some of the data decay stuff tho

This seemed really impressive on my first few listens. Some of the grotesquely over-Auto-Tuned stuff is hard for me to stomach, though. I feel like he's really driven that aesthetic into the ground.

this is like when you download some gimmicky Waves Audio plugin demo and dick around making junk sound all goofy until it runs out

Obviously there's a lot more craftsmanship and vision to it than that. But it does sound very gimmicky, at times distractingly so.

This is absolutely terrible. And that's coming from someone who has much love for his first and mostly his second record too. But this is just straight up ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. It's idealess. Using effects for the sake of it. Coming up with dreadful tracknames for the sake of it.

You can't just transform or further develop by merely using vocoders, autotune and "mysterious" song titles, you know. It takes soul, a sense of direction, and neither is even remotely present on the new record. Shambles. #trenchant

"8 (Circle)" really reminds me of Marc Cohen the "Walking in Memphis" guy

This is great. Fuck music with soul and direction.

Don't know if you are a first time customer to Bon Iver, Frederik, but if that is your stance you will hate his first two records I suppose.

I'm all for auto-tune and vocoders. But a teeny weeny bit of genuinity would be nice. 22, a million, offers none.

this shit is all about some old fashioned "authenticity" bullshit, he like goes down on bruce hornsby and indigo girls ffs

wow this shit is so crazy zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

I do hate the first two records, lol. Bon Iver, Bon Iver was my worst album of 2011. Hate is not too strong a word. I'm quite surprised I like the new one as much as I do as well :)

idk this doesn't really seem like the huge departure from the last one that people are claiming. the methods of arriving are different, but ultimately he's always making goopy watercolors of songs based around his voice.

This is great. Fuck music with soul and direction.

― Frederik B, Monday, October 3, 2016 4:42 PM (five hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

hello 2016

i need to spend more time with this. i don't know if the sounds he is working with here really do the songs a lot of favors but maybe i will change my mind about that.

Bon Iver, Bon Iver was my worst album of 2011. Hate is not too strong a word. I'm quite surprised I like the new one as much as I do as well :)

― Frederik B, Monday, October 3, 2016 5:16 PM (four hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is so perverse

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.