Bon Iver - 22, a Million (2016)

1) 22 (OVER S∞∞N); 2) 10 d E A T h b R E a s T ⚄ ⚄; 3) 715 - CR∑∑KS; 4) 33 "GOD"; 5) 29 #Strafford APTS; 6) 666 ʇ; 7) 21 M◊◊N WATER; 8) 8 (Circle); 9) ____45_____; 10) 00000 Million

Another album, another re-invention - abstract and electronic, yet impossibly human. Vernon tries to make sense out of the world within himself, while giving the door to the listener to do the same.

Key tracks: "10 d E A T h b R E a s T ⚄ ⚄", "666 ʇ", "8 (Circle)"

2016 in retrospect was a watershed year for a lot of the personal and collective anxiety many of my generation and the later ones have been experiencing. It's when dodgy, out-of-touch politics really reared their ugly head in force all around the world at once and many of the issues of late 2010s (and probably the foreseeable future, 2020 writing here) became a tangible part of reality. It was a year of turmoil and it launched a lot of people into a spiral of discordant thoughts, muddled up and trying to figure out their place in a world that had stopped making sense.

Justin Vernon didn't mean to do it, but he inadvertently created the right album for these wrong times. 22, a Million began as a dream-like log of one man's struggle to balance between his public role and his personal feelings - the change from the one-man cabin operation of For Emma, Forever Ago to the wide open breakthrough fame following Bon Iver, Bon Iver was never going to be a comfortable fit for a man so obviously introverted, and once the Grammy appearances and high-profile collaborations had quieted down, Vernon went on a hiatus. The future of Bon Iver as a project became a series of vague umms and ahhs from Vernon, completely uninterested in returning to mass adoration and uncertain what he'd do next. It wasn't until a moment of clarity during another self-imposed exile that Vernon returned to his main project, and in hindsight it's all really obvious that the next step for Bon Iver would be to obscure things from view. Cryptic visual design from the symbol-heavy artwork to the surreal lyric videos, the even more cryptic song titles, Vernon insisting on covering his face on every single promo picture - all built up to a sound that would be as far a stretch from the warm and rich double self-titled as that was from For Emma's sparseness. Reflecting on the relationship between the huge global audience of "a million" that he had somehow cultivated and himself - the "22" - Vernon decided that the only way for him to reconcile with his new visibility was to take things down and rebuild them all over again.

22, a Million is chopped-up and fragmented: it plays around with sound levels, samples and song structures while Vernon twists and filters his own voice to inhuman levels. The preceding album's warm soulful anthems are still clearly there in the very heart of Vernon's songwriting, but he has broken those recognisable elements into tiny pieces, distorting the resulting shrapnel and glued them back together into new shapes. Synthesized falsettos, skittering samples and frantic drum loops coat the album's sound world, the production busily stretching itself to create a hedge between Vernon and the listener. You can peak through the gaps but there's a lot of noise on the way - less a maximalist production, and moreso one that's simply hectic with details and trace elements. With that, Vernon's lyrics have also become increasingly more oblique, littered with made-up words and non-sequiturs to the point that even if you see eye-to-eye with his musical vision, the actual meaning of the songs can still remain a mystery. It wasn't an album made for you, it was an album made for Vernon to sort out his own chaotic thoughts into something coherent, and in turn the music reflected the same process.

Despite the cautiously confrontational nature and his radical reinvention, what's been left completely intact is Vernon’s otherworldly way to tap into something universally beautiful with his music. In-between all the at-first seemingly chaotic elements, there are masses of incredible melodies, heavenly harmonies and and the kind of human warmth that no laptop wizardry can take away. 22, A Million is an intimate but inviting experience that hides a lot more within it than the first glance, solely focused on its attention-grabbing sound (and those song titles), would reveal. The same songwriting foundations that brought the immediately captivating, anthemic power of the likes of "Holocene" and "Flume" are still making its presence known throughout, and Vernon himself has stayed the same. Still impeccably earnest and totally living each note of each song through his entire being, his honest love for his own music leads him to infuse 100% of himself into it; that belief in your own craft is impossible to hide, even when he's obstructed by technology. So much in fact, that I'd argue this is Vernon at his most personal: it may be far more collaborative in nature than the one-man show of his debut, but its search for clarity and that you could hold onto comes completely from its creator, and he makes it audible that it all comes directly from the heart. 

 
When the album was finally released, at the tail-end of 2016, the world as a whole needed that kind of moment of clarity amidst all the overload of bad news and bad times. I needed it - I'm projecting a lot here because 22, a Million became a sort of a sonic wall to lean into while convalescing from the world around me. That its beauty hid within a Geocities gif storm production was - and is - essential: because when the clouds clear away and those different strands find their connection point within the songs, the bits where the disarray starts forming into shape, it's breathtaking. The first two records might have made it more obvious but it's very, very hard for Vernon not write beautiful songs, and I'd say that's the strongest reason why he's gained a following; with every song a soul-searching ballad begging to form a bond with the listener, but transformed along the way into different shapes through the collaborators he brings with him and the changing visions he has for his path. The ones chosen here may be a little unorthodox compared to the first two records, yet the bliss remains.

And 22, a Million is, by far and most of all, a very beautiful album. "33 "GOD"" and "666 ʇ" are anthems that embrace the world within their soaring arms while big drum beats crash and pound - they're those epic communal moments of the previous album finding a new form and understanding of dynamics. "29 #Strafford APTS" is the opposite, a folky campfire song that harks back to Bon Iver's roots, a tranquil and straightforward piece where the only trace of the rest of the album is its infrequent vocal manipulation, but its contrast to the rest is soft and comforting. "715 - CR∑∑KS" and "21 M◊◊N WATER" are in a practical sense just interludes - passages of music that bind the album's movements together - but they're integral moments of stillness in the high-speed attention race of the rest of the album, with the former in particular taking the experimental nature of the Blood Bank EP's "Woods" and creating a song that's a catalogue standout despite being a vocoderised a cappella cut. The tribal march of "10 d E A T h b R E a s T ⚄ ⚄" (where its drums sound like they're coming from somewhere beyond) is brief but powerful, its horn rise towards the end threatening to become colossal before the song cuts itself off - following the quiet scene-setting intro of "22 (OVER S∞∞N)" it's a wall-shattering alarm clock into the real world, and the transition between the two is still incredible. 

By the end, the album's restless nature finds its peace. The stunningly disarming couple of "8 (Circle)" and "00000 Million", as well as the brief bridge of "____45_____" that binds them together, is an incredible closing set: they're the sound of all the weight in the world being lifted from one's shoulders. "8 (Circle)" ascends into the heavens sounding pure, free and wholly released as horn sections and layered vocal harmonies trace its journey. It's where the album's hectic heart starts beating slower, its in-this-context massive five-minute length a serene trail without a single interruption. "00000 Million" lays the album to rest with a gentle piano and hymnal vocal, in what is one of Vernon's most touching and starkly, emotionally naked songs. There's this clichéd feeling where a truly great album closer can really feel like the closure of a journey, the credits roll that gives you the tools to reflect on all you heard before and bringing it all together: "00000 Million" absolutely hits that ideal and quietly wakes one up back into reality again, refreshed and anew.

It's what Vernon needed. It's what I, as a listener needed. And it's why 22, a Million is such a powerful album. It's hit the point where the personal becomes truly inseparable from the pretendingly objective. The songs are fantastic, quirks and all - it's Vernon's peak in terms of both the writing and his arrangements coming together to create something bigger than the two parts alone, an album with a true vision. But it's also an immensely resonant album, the sort of record where its creator has poured blood, sweat and tears into it because he needed to, and that emotional force is an integral part of the material. It lifts a great record into something important - something that stays with you for a long, long time after it's gone. The first two albums had the sound that they would always become someone's classic album - the deconstructed version Vernon laid out here has become mine.

Rating: 10/10