“What might’ve been lost” (repeat.)
Bon Iver ~ Wolves (act I and II)
The vocal phrasing assencuates my feelings immediately, to my ears a new noise enters and i begin to feel dazed. Brought to my feet by what can only be catagorized by cosmic feelings, I manuvour closer to the smoke and lights of the stage/pedestal. Lights focus on Justin Vernon’s figure, his curled and disfigured body language casts a spell of intense isolation. Before your wonderment can grow about his mysteriousness the atmosphere begins its mushrooming and soon enough the crowd is encapsulated in a heightened state of euphoria, incapable of average humans i’m sure. The guitars pick up pace on the bridge and rhymically rush the crowd with tingling vibrations, added to the effect of the perfectly grainy falsetto which melds your surrounding company to its furthest reaches and beyond. You feel like basking in the huge melting pot of it. You realise Bon Iver just busted a tune Iron & Wine would go green with envy for, afterall they’re Bon Iver’s indie-folking predecesesors in a genre based comparison, albeit i’m not condoning their originality, just Bon Iver is new and shiny and deserves more hype. More hype than Vernon’s former band DeYarmond Edison, just to balance the biasedness here.
Ok, so they’re accending to the pinnicle of their song and they’re bringing you to such great heights with them. Literally, the crowd unites with the phrase, “What might’ve been lost…” in a premeditated, nontheless, almighty repetitive vocal progression. With expressive clatters of percussion splashing the fuck out of cymbals and leaving guitar strings quivering for the fret of snapping. It gets alot louder and fucking climaxical, across between exorcism and orgasm, actual strokes of genious stream out of Vernon’s soul in the form of girly screams. Then, after the flurry of pitch defying squeals the outro winds you down into lonely remoteness. Though, you leave feeling cranked up five gears and baffled by the puzzling lyrics.
Whilst concentrating on lyrics lost in negative space this is Vernon pissing his regrets to the wind at his best with out relinquishing a single one of them. Here’s the trigger before the chanting,
“And the story’s all over you.
In the morning i’ll call you.
Can’t you find a clue when your eyes are all painted Sinatra blue.”
I will struggle to decode the meanings until i’ve put myself in Bon Iver’s shoes i’m sure, there’s just a chockful of connotations with each word to it’s own. Tracks like Flume and Lump Sum which have more ambiguous takes are considerable power-buff-spells within “For Emma, Forever Ago” it leaves the album with an enchanted feel. What even is a Flume? Above all solid nouns, the music keeps to its introspective, folky tone, whilst adding horns to it with classy orchestrial touches. Kinda like a purified version Flaming Lips ~ Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots. (bar all that cute Japanese Schoolgirl mumbling)
Vernon’s eclectic mind threw up this album during a brutal Wisconsin winter, of three months seclusion in a log cabin. This was good for two things, shooting deer for basic survival and burying his relationship breakdown in the snow. Sure fire fucked-up time really. This all seems quite generic but honestly if your mind greets the slightest sullen feeling, let Bon Iver be your musical ointment… Unless you’d enjoy a frivolous time in a deadbeat cabin, shit, the more i option that to myself the more it makes sense now :/
Poor guy
2 years ago