Bon?

After the success of Bon Iver’s debut album For Emma, Forever Ago last year it’s going to be interesting to see how this (old-school) EP does. It’s heartening (to me) that it’s being kept as an EP in its own right, and hasn’t been tagged on to the album (as seems to be the trend for many labels these days with cash-in deluxe editions).

So what’s it like? Well I’m pleased to say that it’s largely very good. Side A (I got the fine 12inch version) in particular is excellent – opening with the title track, it looks lyrically toward the more hopeful and redemptive side of For Emma, and couples it with a bigger, more fleshed out band sound. This expansive step is then countered by ‘Beach Baby’ which is a lovely, quiet, acoustic track, reminiscent of Elliott Smith, with a gorgeous, minimalist guitar solo.

Side B is more complicated – the opening ‘Baby’s’ sounds worryingly like a Coldplay track, as the bigger, band sound comes over as bombastic and un-original, with none of the feel and atmosphere of the title track. This is hopefully a mis-step and not an (arena) avenue he and the band will be pursuing. The closing track is the a-capella ‘Into the Woods’, a four line poem repeated in harmony that made a stunning opening to their gig but here suffers slightly by the use of vocoder, something I’ve always hated. That said, it remains a fascinating piece of music - reminiscent of some of the stranger tracks from David Crosby’s glorious If I Could Only Remember My Name – which ends this EP on a high note. Recommended.

The Hang the DJ top spot for '08!

And so my two standout albums of the year: Bon Iver’s For Emma, Forever Ago has been much written about and debated but it’s an album i’ve loved since getting an early copy on import from the US. The story behind the album’s genesis seems too romantic for some people, but for me it’s just a great album – sad and bruised and hopeful all to once – that has been a genuine word of mouth success. It hasn’t been hugely marketed, as sometimes happens (yet, at least), it wasn’t mined for singles and spin offs, it was just allowed to sit there and be talked about and discovered. His live shows too were stunning, i saw him twice and the songs seemed at once the same and different as you saw them played by his three piece band. Top marks from me.

My second record of the year is the Northline Soundtrack by Willy Vlautin & Paul Brainard, a forty minute instrumental album that accompanied Vlautin's sophomore novel published back in February (which is the only original soundtrack i know by the author of a published novel). I do admit to a bit of a bias here, having worked on the novel, but this is a beautiful piece of music – think Ry Cooder’s Paris, Texas meets Ennio Morricone and you’re in the right dusty field. Fans of Richmond Fontaine will know all about Paul Brainard’s pedal steel playing (also with the Sadies, M. Ward etc.) but the arrangements he and Vlautin came up with for acoustic guitar, steel, drums, harmonica and trumpet were gorgeous, evocative and moving – from the haunting title theme and its refrain to ‘Doc Holidays’ , ‘Paul Newman Saves the Night’ and on. This is still only currently available with the original edition of the novel, but if this is your kind of thing you should really track it down (and the novel is a stunner too), here's a taster...

And something not from 2008...

Thanks to all the guest post-ers this week, nice choices! I was at the St Giles' Bon Iver gig too, which was as special as Laura Barton made it sound.
I'm going to post my ten albums and tracks of the year lists towards the end of the week, but does anyone have a musical highlight of their own that they want to share? I have one Hang the DJ xmas goodie bag to give away to the person who's reply goes up.

In the meantime, and as it's Sunday night, here's something lovely from Aretha...

Laura Barton on Bon Iver at St Giles Church, London

St Giles church sits a little way back from the road in central London, a stone's throw from Tottenham Court Road station, where the buses swing round onto New Oxford Street, and the pedestrians spill out across the pavements. On a weekday evening in early summer, when the trees in the churchyard hung heavy and waxy, Bon Iver played here at St Giles, a world away from the bustle outside, sitting quietly at the top of the aisle before an audience of some 200 people.
There was something about the Bon Iver album that lit me up. Released at the start of this year, For Emma, Forever Ago ran a mere 37 minutes long. Yet its nine songs proved more potent, more redemptive, more astonishing, than anything I have heard since Van Morrison's Astral Weeks.
I'd seen them played live in a number of locations, from the Social to the Scala, but I had never heard those songs sound quite so rapturous as that night at St Giles. Perhaps it was the setting that brought out the gospel tinge to Justin Vernon's voice, perhaps it was the instinctive sense of awe that descends whenever one finds oneself seated on wooden pews, before stained glass, breathing hallowed air. But as the evening unfolded in layers of falsetto, drums and steel guitar, the air quivered with utter devotion.
The audience that evening was largely made up of jaded music industry aficionados and hipster types, but by the end of the short, sweet set, there was a sense that we had all witnessed something monumental. For the final song, the band came out into the aisle to sing The Wolves (Act I and II), entirely without amplification. The audience crowded round, joined in, and afterwards cheered, applauded, whooped. I looked around and saw there row upon row of people — or perhaps we might call them believers — standing wet-eyed with joy.

Laura Barton

Bon Iver, Into the Woods...

In the Woods, Forever Ago

Bon Iver's debut album came out to great fanfare earlier this year, and much has been written about the way it deals so beautifully with themes of isolation, loss and abandonment. Above all though, for me, it's just one of those rare, natural, word of mouth successes that make you feel better about the world. Its title track, For Emma, was released yesterday as a 7inch single – I’ve bought one as my choice for my friend Douglas' vintage jukebox, coming to a pub near you soon (if you live in Camden, at least) - and here borrowed from Justin Vernon's website, is a rather lovely new arrangement of this rather lovely song...

Bon Iver - "For Emma" from MySpace Transmissions


I won't make a habit of writing here about books i've worked on (promise), but the album was first brought to my attention earlier in the year, before 4AD picked it up in the UK, when a friend noticed the-man-in-the-cabin-in-the-wilderness back story bore some resemblance to a novel we published the previous year, Gerard Donovan's gorgeous, and troubling, Julius Winsome. So, if you're fan of the album i recommend this too (click on image)...