

But he's using it that way now, to animate visionary, disarmingly beautiful and multi-dimensional songs we'll be puzzling over for a long while. He hasn't always used it that way in the past. They evoke the vague, hovering, formless anxiety that governs the current daily news cycle, but never marinate there – Vernon's aching-and-soaring voice, alone or in thickly harmonized multi-tracked arrays, manages to reassure and galvanize in the same instant. Though they lean on different devices, many of the standout tracks share the head-spinning episodic energy of "Holyfields." They're notable for jump-cut changes of mood and texture, and animated by alternating currents of despair and prayer, anger and bliss ("Naeem" features a relevant line: "Well I can't be angry long, we burnt up in my bed"). Vernon wrote music for a 75-minute collaborative piece, entitled Come Through, that includes the songs "Naeem," "Jelmore," and "Marion" he reworked for this album more generally, he's credited the project with clarifying and kickstarting his creativity. Several of the songs are the product of a collaboration with Minnesota's TU Dance company.
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Vernon has described the album as the autumnal installment in a seasonal series of albums that began with the wintery introspections of For Emma, Forever Ago, his 2007 debut. Moments of placid reflection evolve into tense questions – "Jelmore" goes pointedly at climate change concerns as it asks, "How long will you disregard this heat?"įront Row Watch Bon Iver Perform Live In A Brooklyn Warehouse Lighthearted bits of wordless-vocal ad-libbing (see especially "Hey, Ma" and the radiant "Naeem") wind up describing hauntingly specific emotional states. Songs are resolute one minute and wracked with doubt the next. The songs of i,i are brief in duration – and because they're not always locked into verse-chorus structure, they resonate a bit differently each time you hear them. You're left with a "what just happened?" feeling, the sense that each of the distinct episodes of the song add up to something greater, a multi-layered evocation that eludes classification in words. Vernon does not he lets the curtain drop soon after. Angled heavenward, it's the kind of gorgeous that most songwriters would repeat over and over again.

Then comes a third section with a different melody. If you close your eyes you can see robed arms in the air, clearing away the initial anxiety.īoth the verse and refrain are short, ornately orchestrated, and dramatic – a rapid seesaw of tension and reassurance made vivid by stretches of instrumental calm in between. They shift the tempo to a churchgoing processional, and begin making a different kind of music – the instantly recognizable uplift noises of the faithful. But then the Justin Vernon Singers arrive, at an odd angle, between phrases. c 1996-2022 The Octave Project Developers This is the sixth edition of the Octave documentation, and is consistent with version 7.2.0 of Octave.
