Conceived during late-night recordings and lockdown quiet, SABLE, is the newest release from Justin Vernon, or as he is more popularly known: Bon Iver. The collection weaves together personal experience and universal truth, and does so whilst beautifully playing with new sonic territory. What has been described as a return to the roots of the artist certainly serves as a listening period of memory, longing, and heartbreak. The ethereal and intimate style of Bon Iver holds its own, once again, through his newest EP.
The EP’s opening track ‘...’ extends just 12 seconds before its first full-length song, and contains only a few strings of sound. A high-pitched alarm-sounding note persists throughout then. is abruptly reduced from an echo to an isolated note, resembling the more familiar sound of a piano. A thoughtful display of reflection can be anticipated from this introduction, a suspicion that is quickly confirmed in the next title.
THINGS BEHIND THINGS BEHIND THINGS
Justin DeYarmond (Bon Iver) spoke about the track at North Folk School in late September and recalled ‘the metaphor of pain and trauma that we all possess… like a garage with too much s*** in there and there’s ‘things behind things behind things’. The layered illustration in his words certainly reigns true throughout the song; even its sentences are not finished before their opening phrases are spoken repeatedly.
Delicate and warming guitar strings guide the songs and create harmonious moments of emotion each time the chorus is reached. It seems few instruments and a focus on voice set the tone for this EP.
DeYarmond’s voice is layered over itself several times in what appears to be an intentionally teaching chorus, guiding the ironically lost voice within the narrator. Reflection on the self and life encases this song, housing experiences like ‘I got caught compiling my own news’ and ‘I got caught looking in the mirror on the regular, what I see there resembles some competitor’ detail self-doubt and judgement through a lens of trauma and weighing past times.
S P E Y S I D E
Once again following a seeming return to the stripped-back and vulnerable catalogue of Bon Iver, we are met with S P E Y S I D E. On the webstore of Bon Iver, the EP’s ‘stripped back… primary elements’ and ‘intimacy’ are most prominent on this one. It is described as a kind of apology in song form to those the singer may have hurt.
‘Nothing’s really something, now the whole thing’s soot’ struck a chord in my listening experience due to the decaying image it provokes. Something as unemotional and material as soot is clambered with new meaning as it emulates the decay and contagious blackening of a memory that once was.
The speaker looks back as ‘nothing’s really happened like I thought it would’. Each guitar chord is relatively sparse and reminiscent of a strong melody, seemingly beaten down by time and the experience he recollects. Consequently, each one feels attached to the speaker’s emotion, as well as the listener’s. When the guitar dies it is replaced by beautiful, yearning violins, which fill the break in the song, depicting a chorus of emotion.
A region in Scotland, Speyside is the anchoring location of the song and is where the voice is left ‘here on Speyside quay’ while he ponders his actions and the people he has grown distant from. ‘What had held on’ him becomes clear in the quiet, and the song can be seen from this seated perspective.
AWARDS SEASON
Written on walks around Lake of Isles in Minneapolis, ‘AWARDS SEASON’ narrates a relationship's stagnant or wavering phase, and claims the title of my favourite on this EP. Tokens like a song he played by ‘Rickie Lee’ gives an intimate feel into the individual experiences of these two people. Continuous use of ‘you’ gives the impression that the song is, once again, addressed to its subject. This experience can’t be confused with isolation, as the heart-felt and longing feel in DeYarmond’s voice is universal and comforting.
‘I’m a sable and honey, us the fable’ is one of my favourite lines from this EP. Terms of endearment like this one punctuate the collection, and crowd the listening experience with longing, with enough anonymity to be infectious. Continuous ‘ae’ sounding words are crowded together: ‘wane’, ‘replayed’ and ‘change’; he hangs onto vowels as well as memories, while the underlying decay grows in their repetition.
Saxophones and trumpets inject the instrumental break before the final verse with passion and a crescendo of activity in the singer's and reader's minds as they reflect on all of these powerful feelings felt for one another.
The five-minute song ends with around twenty seconds of silence, following the last words spoken on the EP ‘But you know what will stay? Everything we’ve made’. Time beyond these words and indeed the collection as a whole appears to materialise and continually solidify these words; he confirms the everlasting and concrete nature of the relationship’s lasting effects and goes forth with them equipping him. Just as the EP opens with a poignant precipice of silence, we are greeted with the same familiar lull as it closes. Consequently, the EP as a whole evokes a period of thoughtful contemplation, contained by the tracks but limitless in what it leaves its listener with.
SABLE is a truly poetic and moving experience, a listen to Bon Iver’s new EP is a listen for the heart and head; self-reflection, mourning what once was, and growing forward. The singer’s way with words has never, once, been in doubt and the same can be said for SABLE. I recommend working your way through the four songs in order; as this EP marks yet another complex and poignant release from the artist. Described as a return to the roots of Bon Iver, I am reminded of my first experiences with the artist in ‘For Emma, Forever Ago’, and look forward to more of this defining sound.
