22, A Million was the best album of 2016. Everything about it was groundbreaking and pushed boundaries like no album did before it. From sampling to mastering, everything about it seems to be completely out of Justin Vernon’s comfort zone and habitual compositions, but 22, A Million was the only follow-up to Bon Iver that was meant to be.
Ever since Birdie’s cover of “Skinny Love” back in 2011, Bon Iver fever took over the world of music’s very (and we do mean very) mild connoisseurs by storm, hitting quite a few super-knowledgeable-yet-slightly-unassumingly-immersed-in-casual-hipsterism individuals as well, from your average indie-folk fanatic to Pitchfork staffers.
Of course, back then, and even earlier, Bon Iver’s sound was just what the world needed. The soothing sound of For Emma, Forever Ago‘s “Flume” was the equivalent of a tender lullaby to an increasingly anxious world. In fact, at the time, the Sartrian malaise born from the realization that we had all entered a new era, the 21st century, early cyber revolution, “generation Y”, the 2008 krach, and the general in limbo feeling of the entre-deux between the 2000’s and whatever came next.
This first record, although very much anchored in the folk-revivalist wave that pops out every now and then, brought some novelty to the genre. It seemed to draw inspiration from everyone since Anne Briggs all the way to Sufjan Stevens, Iron And Wine or Sibylle Baier, and combined those 40-ish years of modern folk music into one single not-quite-folk album with this little (massive actually) indescribable something that left it at the very door of the genre, waiting for other albums to help it define a new universe. They never came.
They got close, though: Fleet Foxes, José González and Beirut all built on that, dropping beauties that stopped, shook “Emma”‘s hand and got back on their way; Mumford and Sons tried to join her, but fell short, and Father John Misty waved from afar as he passed her by on his way to creating his own wonder.
For Emma, Forever Ago was destined for loneliness however: without it, it wouldn’t have been created. Heartbroken and locked in his basement for weeks, Justin Vernon wrote and recorded the album on his own, in a process that transcends sorrow, depression, exaltation, and beauty itself. And Bon Iver’s iconic vocals came roaring, sometimes squeaking, out of that basement and were unleashed onto the world, which was dragged down, against its will, into the earth and back out through the most hair-raising sonic experience it had heard in a long time. And it asked for more.
And more came. From the Blood Bank EP and all the way through Bon Iver, going through Volcano Choir’s Unmap, then again on Repave, James Blake’s Enough Thunder and even Kanye West’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, Justin Vernon didn’t lose the folk structure or “touch” so much as he reinvented it. He simply exploited whatever made him a breakthrough artist in the first place: parasites.
The texture of Vernon’s vocals and his timbre never sounded like anything. Was it amazing or terrible? None, it was simply genius. Could he sing? Could we care less? What mattered was that he projected the deepest of his soul through his lungs and throat, and the world couldn’t help but listen. In the purest sense of the term, vocals became Bon Iver’s leading instrument.
Then, as one would pass a guitar through effect pedals, Vernon put his voice through autotune on “Woods”. And that’s when 22, A Million started being made.
On Bon Iver, a push farther from tradition and further into experimentation became overwhelmingly apparent, building up and expanding their signature sound: compressed vocals, always in this extremely weird yet incredibly pleasant “falsetto”, and this time, getting the winds and trumpets to take center-stage such as on “Minnesota, WI” or “Beth/Rest”, solidifying the appropriation of military-like beats on “Holocene”, always incorporating those out-of-place and somewhat awkward licks and melodies de-harmonizing the whole structure but wonderfully complementing the overdriven guitars on “Perth”, and of course, experimenting with synthesizers on “Hinnom, TX”, but always, always, coming back to folk roots like on “Towers”.
In short, their sophomore was today’s Bon Iver’s cornerstone, their tour de force, and the one of most prophetic albums ever written.
Last year, a friend got in touch with us after attending Eaux Claires, where Vernon debuted two tracks from 22, A Million. She was telling us how “unusual” and “different” Bon Iver became, and obviously, we were curious, excited and worried at the same time. Two days later “22 (OVER S∞∞N)” was released as a single. By previewing this track at his own festival, during a headlining set, after 5 years of absence, Vernon redefined audacity. It was so different, yet so similar to whatever we knew of Bon Iver.
A few weeks later, the full album came out and we fell in love. It felt like it was recorded in a forest, on Neptune, in 3089.
On 22, A Million, Bon Iver invented Folktronica.
Yet everything was there: the parasitic samples [throughout the whole album, but especially] on “22 (OVER S∞∞N)”, the military drums on “10 d E A T h b R E a s T ⚄ ⚄”, the masterfully used (yet subtle) autotune on “715 – CRΣΣKS” or “21 M◊◊N WATER”, the trumpets on “8 (circle)”, the classic folk song “29 #Strafford APTS”, and even the self-sampled “Fall Creek Boys Choir” on “715 – CRΣΣKS”.
It was the logical suite, the culmination of all of Vernon’s works so far, all of his influences and acquired tastes, a summary of all his most daring ideas, all in one earth-shattering LP. Yet no one saw it coming. It is only a posteriori that we can all stand in awe in front of Vernon’s genius, relishing on the vintage easter eggs and clues he had unveiled to us all along.
Hiding in plain sight was the new Bon Iver, more than an acoustic guitar-slamming sad boy crew: pure geniuses.
This is not a justification of our album of the year pick, but an appreciation of Bon Iver’s genius, and an acknowledgement of the band as today’s most groundbreaking, genre-bending, boundary-breaking, possibly extraterrestrial and certainly out-of-this-worldly act.
22, A Million comes from the future, and we cannot wait to get there.