Since Justin Vernon made music under the name Bon Iver, he has been interested in the division. It all started in 2007 with the end of a love story: two made one – Vernon found himself in isolation, wrote the songs of for Emma, Forever Ago (2007). A good colleague said at the time when listening to this album, he was immediately melancholy because the music was already laid out that this singer/songwriter will not take up such a work again.
And this is how it happens: at Bon Iver, Bon Iver (2011), the songwriting divides off the personality. The songs play in inventive places, the harmonies are heavenly, the mood diffusely. 22, a million (2016) the partition continues in a highly abstract way, the songs now receive numbers as titles, plus letter columns, as if from the moment when the computer goes hops. On the bipolarity I, I (2019), the songs sound like the children of Elon Musk: “Yi”, “Imi”, “U (Man like)”. Anyone who sees Bon Iver these tracks live will recognize how strong folk and electronics repeatedly put on and repel. As Justin Vernon tries to throw himself into these songs, then to distance themselves from them again. To ask in the play “22 (Over S∞∞n)” whether the end of all time can be read from the constellation of the stars.
“Like a fake wonderland”
With I, I could have set a point behind Bon Iver. It would not have been a nice conclusion, but a worthy. Because everything began with the very personal navel show in the hut in the forest, the comparison of the self-determining personnel pronoun on I, I would have resulted in a “here-sich-der-Kreis” moment. But Justin Vernon feels that he still has a story in stock that may have a better conclusion. For Emma, Forever AGO is about “Aus-Zwei-Mach-Eins”. Sable, fable from “Aus-Es-Mach-Zwei”. The division of the album is more musically obvious than on the works before. The vocabulary Sable, which gives the first part the name, stands here not only for the black-fur marten genre of the zobel, but also for the black, dark, dark. “Sable fits the energy of darkness,” says Vernon. “Fable, on the other hand, is a kind of bright, colorful, majestic, trendy story. Almost like a fable. Like a fake wonderland.” Although it remains open whether Justin Vernon is the Alice in this story that ventures into this wonderland. Or Percy, the white rabbit that is able to open portals to take yourself and others in fantastic worlds. If in doubt, Justin Vernon is probably both: Alice and Karnickel.
Without a dot, with a comma
“All Bon-Viver plates have this comma in the middle,” says Justin Vernon. The punctuation mark refers to duality. It connects as much as it separates. Emma, the eternity. The two parts of Bon Iver. The 22 (the age when Vernon published the first record with his old band Deyarmond Edison), the million (which he wants to achieve with it). I, me. And now Sable, Fable – as a step forward. “Because loneliness is now being supplemented by a togetherness.” Not as a before and after history. But as “a coin that always has two sides”, as Vernon puts it. Of course, the small F also has a meaning in front of the Versalia. Without these letters, Able remains. To be capable of togetherness.
Specifically, the Sable part consists of the three pieces that Vernon published on the EP of the same name at the end of 2024. It is pure folk songs, the voice is hardly manipulated, with him as a songwriter as close to the ear as it has not been for many years. The minimalist gospel “Awards Season” is the key piece, named after the winter months in which the awards are awarded in the creative industries before it can finally be spring afterwards.
“I am the Düsternis / We The Fabel,” sings Justin Vernon before formulating the end of the relationship to determine in the final all alone, only to a floating orgent tone: “But you know what Stay? / Everything We’ve Made.” At this point, the feeling of for Emma, Forever Ago. This knowledge of a farewell. And the fact that you have lost people – and the pain is all the greater when you find that two lives no longer touch each other. And you see yourself again, be it on TV at a award ceremony. The lost person in the spotlight. The protagonist alone in darkness. It can’t be sad. And it won’t.
Fable follows with his nine pieces, Justin Vernon tells a story of healing: “If Sablle is like a dark crack and a stuck place, then Fable stands for healing and the ability to continue.” You could also put it this way: these nine songs are love and party songs. After the conditions of Bon Iver, of course. There is the neo-r’n’n’b of “Everything is Peaceful Love” about the “start of a relationship, a first meeting in which everything seems possible”, as Vernon describes it. There is a little kidnapped “Walk Home”, about the moment when there can already be a withdrawal, “a mood like: ‘I just want to be with you. Let’s go home and let the sun shine in the window.'” And there is the happy ending: With “There’s a rhythm” Justin Vernon puts up the thesis, there is a step, a speed, a speed, a speed, to be in step with someone else ”. The difficulty is to have to pay attention to two tempos: “On his own and that of the other person”. This is also why the piece sounds very leisurely, it floats carefully, almost packed like in cotton wool. Couple dance compatible: Justin Vernon lets the bracket blues play. At least for a moment, because it is not that you could simply turn off the dark, doubtful side, like a television apparatus that annoys you. “You can’t just say: ‘I have found the right person, now I can drink Corona beer for the rest of my life.'” There is always work, you always have changes. “And there are more things that take life away. Diseases, deaths. But: Justin Vernon feels prepared for it. For life. For love. It is quite possible that this has much more than he could imagine in the hut at the time. But was also a long way. The many commas already show that.