ADVERTISEMENTListening to Bon Iver brings to mind a quote from Julie Buntin’s novel “Marlena”: “I want to go home but what I mean, what I’m grasping for, is not a place. It’s a feeling. I want to go back. But back where?”
That feeling, of searching for some intangible comfort, has always been core to the band’s output. Ever since the solitary creaks and layered vocals of debut album ‘For Emma, Forever Ago’, recorded in a remote Wisconsin cabin, Bon Iver has become synonymous with a woodsy, folkloric feel — their music a liminal space in which quiet transitions emerge and emotions thaw.
It’s an identity that frontman Justin Vernon has been trying to escape throughout his almost two-decade career, each new album more distant from the last via increasingly abstract electronic experimentation.
From the dense dreamscapes of 2011’s ‘Bon Iver, Bon Iver’ to the prism pop of 2016’s ‘22, A Million’, listeners are always being taken somewhere new – yet the feelings conjured remain the same. Few other artists have the ability to capture longing in the same way; the endless cycles of our minds attempting to find acceptance.
Six years after 2019’s ‘i,i’, it feels like Vernon has finally reached the place he’s been yearning for.
Told in two parts, ‘SABLE, fABLE’ is Bon Iver’s most optimistic album yet – a sparkling embrace of change, hope and the beauty to be found within life’s ephemerality.
Composed in isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic, the first three tracks — released as an EP last year — mark the beginning of an emotional arc, starting from a place of anxiety. In ‘THINGS BEHIND THINGS BEHIND THINGS’, Vernon tries to expel it — his trademark repetitions turning thoughts into noise into nothing: “I would like the feeling / I would like the feeling / I would like the feeling gone.”
This restlessness settles as we transition into ‘SPEYSIDE’, a calming contemplation of contrition that cradles guilt while letting it gently slip away into acceptance: “I really know now what had hold on me”. While the discomfort lingers, the music slows — and learns to sit with it.
Many of Bon Iver’s best, and most notable works have emerged from regret and heartbreak — caught in the gentle swells of tracks like ‘Skinny Love’ and ‘Wisconsin’. But ‘SABLE, fABLE’ is the first time we hear Vernon truly move beyond that cycle. It’s a sadness broken by the scattered solidarity of piano keys and saxophone wails of ‘AWARDS SEASON’, lyrics flickering with a new-found hope: “I can handle / Way more than I can handle.”
The rest of the album is vibrant with the sweetness of being in the moment, the funky fizzles of ‘Everything Is Peaceful Love’ hitting like warm rays. That soaring croon of “And damn if i’m not climbing up a tree” reminds us we can rise above the wreckage of painful experiences — and find contentment.
Even when wrestling with the confusions of desire in tracks such as ‘Walk Home’ and ‘If Only I Could Wait’ (a collaboration with Danielle Haim), there’s serenity to every tumbling harmony and tender piano melody. The familiar elements are still there: glitching soundscapes and falsetto, but no longer imprisoned in the wilderness of rumination.
If Bon Iver’s music once felt like grasping for a feeling, ‘SABLE, fABLE’ is the release — a recognition that true comfort comes from being at peace with the present. Wherever that may be.
‘SABLE, fABLE’ by Bon Iver is out now.
