Bon Iver: VOLUMES: ONE “SELECTIONS FROM MUSIC CONCERTS 2019-2023 BON IVER 6 PIECE BAND” Album Review

Vernon’s voice, too, comes into sharper focus. We are used to hearing him through a halo of reverb, as part of a Vocoder robo-choir, tucked back in the mix, less a focal point than another instrument in the ensemble. Here he is present and central. You can hear all his textures, from his baritone croon to his otherworldly falsetto to his cartoony yelp, more clearly and intimately than ever before. Vernon has plenty of other voices to play off, both sung and instrumental: the soaring vocal contributions of Bon Iver’s Jagjaguwar labelmates Bizhiki infuse “WE” with the convocational energy of powwow singing. There is mercifully little saxophone in these recordings, at least in comparison to the heyday of Vernon’s collaboration with Colin Stetson, which ultimately (through no fault of theirs) made “languid sax wafting over the wasteland” into an indie-music cliche, an all-purpose shortcut for profundity and eclecticism.

The greatest foil to Vernon’s voice, though, is Wasner’s electric guitar. Jenn Wasner, who also plays in Wye Oak and Flock of Dimes, is neither a riffy bludgeoner nor a pure avant-garde texturalist: She is a player who above all traverses the music. She throws crystal shards of chords across songs, winds effortless repeating figures around them, interrupts them with jerky countermelodies. Nowhere is her comping and contrapuntal genius more on display than on SELECTIONS’s extended version of “JELMORE.” In the hands of the six-piece band, the shivering chords of that miniature apocalyptic soul song build into a cathartic climax, which Wasner punctuates with weeping slide guitar. It is a kind of David-Lindley-on-“These Days” moment, but less redemptive—a desperate prayer amid the end times.

There has always been something slightly churchy about Bon Iver’s music. Vernon was a religion major in college, and gospel music has been a notable influence on both his songwriting and his singing. Longtime fans will be pleased to hear “HEAVENLY FATHER,” one of his most beloved songs, get a propulsive full-band treatment on SELECTIONS. But the spiritual heart of the album is its sole cover, a rapturous version of “A Satisfied Mind,” a country song made popular by Mahalia Jackson but also covered by a host of other Vernon-adjacent artists, notably including (on two separate recordings) Bob Dylan. Vernon has revisited this song at critical junctures before: first with his early band DeYarmond Edison, apparently as a vehicle for practicing his falsetto, then at a Eau Claire jazz festival in 2009, on the heels of his breakout success. It is, as Vernon said back then, a song about “what it’s like to be human, to be humble, to be where we’re from.” In the 2017 performance on SELECTIONS, he tackles the song a cappella, flanked by ghost-in-the-machine harmonies: “Money can’t buy back your youth when you’re old/Or a friend when you’re lonesome or a love that’s grown cold.” The computerized voices are so icy and clinical that they somehow become their opposite, circling one another and joining, only to break apart, altered by the contact. It is a kind of cyborg communion, voices thrown skyward. Even when he sings alone, he is multiple.

Bon Iver: Volumes: One Selections From Music Concerts 2019-2023 Bon Iver 6 Piece Band