Record Review: Bon Iver (Bon Iver, 2011)

Justin Vernon’s 2007 masterpiece For Emma, Forever Ago was famously recorded in a Wisconsin hunting cabin following a series of unfortunate losses and taxing life circumstances. The music was sonically sparse, quiet, personal, and inward-looking. For Vernon’s sophomore effort, it seems the artist has come out of the cabin. If the first Bon Iver LP was about un-stacking your load, coping with the losses and inevitable setbacks life brings, the second full-length record seems to be about starting anew. “Perth,” the eponymous record’s opening track, concludes with the lyric “you’re breaking your ground.” This line accurately describes the artistic project Vernon undertakes on Bon Iver, Bon Iver. Indeed, he is breaking new ground both musically and lyrically.

Whereas the dominant sounds on For Emma were acoustic guitars and falsetto vocals, Vernon’s sonic palette has expanded exponentially on this sophomore effort. Bass saxophones, French horns, steel guitars, banjos, distorted electric guitars, muted trumpets, Flamenco-influenced acoustic guitars, 80s Korg keyboards, xylophones, and military-sounding drums all serve as key ingredients in Bon Iver’s musical stew. Rather than sounding gimmicky or contrived, though, these textures suggest a world of their own, one that matches Vernon’s oblique, impressionistic lyrics.

Justin Vernon has been justifiably praised as one of the most significant songwriters of his generation largely because of his use of wordplay, poetic imagery, and ability to highlight the natural beauty of language. While Bon Iver songs have never been particularly known for their transparency, the For Emma tunes had a highly personal, introspective quality. Songs like “Skinny Love” and “Re: Stacks” served as narratives of the speaker’s internal life. The strong emotions expressed in these tracks were ambiguous, yet highly accessible to the listener. The lyrics from Bon Iver, Bon Iver, on the other hand, hint at personal themes rather than stating them explicitly. The songs’ geographically-based titles give us the impression that the songwriter is depicting specific events in precise locations. The actual lyrical content, though, often serves as more of a collage of people, incidents, and feelings that come together around some hard-to-define thematic concept. Many of the songs seem to be about transformative experiences, moments in which one comes to unique realizations about one’s self. These instances depicted on the album seem to revolve around friends, lovers, and family. Such epiphanies are reflected in lines like “still alive who you love,” “and at once I knew I was not magnificent,” “I could see for miles and miles,” “love can hardly leave the room with your heart,” “I was only for to die beside,” and “I ain’t living in the dark no more.” Lyrics such as these provide a solid grounding for his often abstract, yet always beautiful, poetry.

It is appropriate that the record depicts powerful incidents in one’s life, since the album is successful largely because of the memorable moments it creates, from the way the acoustic guitar, pedal steel, and xylophone harmonize at the opening of “Holocene” to the gentle depiction of sexual awakening in “Michicant.” All of the album’s divergent qualities come together in “Calgary,” a breathtakingly subtle and nuanced track near the end of the record. The song’s natural ebb and flow match its nautically-inflected lyrics (“so it’s storming on the lake”; “wake up to your starboard bride”; etc.). Vernon saves the most controversial song, though, for the very end. The final track, “Beth/Rest” has generated much discussion on the blogs, since it is a rather unabashed tribute to Bruce Hornsby and other perpetrators of 80s, keyboard-driven, adult-contemporary pop. While this song will undoubtedly be the hardest for the indie-centric portion of Bon Iver’s audience to embrace, it has been rescued from cheesiness for me after repeated listens. Although Vernon uses the ubiquitous Korg keyboard for this song’s sonic base, unique, subtle sounds are layered on top, including the pedal steel, atmospheric soprano saxophone, and some ghoul-haunted synthesizers. While it’s still the weak link in an otherwise virtually flawless record, its texture is anything but hackneyed. Surprisingly, one can see why Vernon would end the record with “Beth/Rest.” The album’s penultimate line is “danger has been stole away.” Lyrically, there’s a sense of contentment and acceptance. Vernon, having grown up with the music of the 80s and 90s, would naturally gravitate towards these sounds to express familiarity and “settling.”

The audacity and complete lack of concern about “indie cred” reflected in this final track bodes well for Bon Iver as an artist. Despite the fact that Vernon is now more in the spotlight than ever, given his crucial role on Kanye West’s 2010 blockbuster My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, he has made the record he wanted to make with relentless energy and passion. Bon Iver, Bon Iver is the year’s most ambiguously challenging, viscerally moving, sonically intriguing, musical work so far.

Movie Review: Midnight in Paris (2011, Directed by Woody Allen)

As I wander around great American cities, I am often filled with a vague sense that I am somehow walking on the shoulders of past giants. Strolling through Greenwich Village about a year ago, I couldn’t help but construct an imaginary conversation between Bob Dylan, Allen Ginsburg, and myself at some subterranean coffee shop. Walking across the Midway Plaisance on the University of Chicago campus just yesterday, I was struck with the vibrant sights and sounds of the 1893 Columbian Exposition, all in my mind’s eye and ear, of course. I believe my tendency to romanticize the past is shared by many. This suspicion is given credence by Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris, the most emotionally satisfying film he has made in some time.

Owen Wilson plays Gil, a Hollywood screenwriter with novelistic aspirations. As is often the case in Allen’s work, the protagonist finds himself in a creative and personal funk. He is engaged to Inez, a beautiful, yet relentlessly dull, daughter of an oil businessman. While visiting Paris, Gil becomes painfully aware of how insipid his life is, especially when cast against the backdrop of the romantic French city. Through a plot turn reminiscent of The Purple Rose of Cairo, Gil finds himself whisked back to the Paris of the 1920s, a time when such towering artists as Hemingway, Picasso, and Gertrude Stein walked the Parisian streets. The protagonist becomes involved in the lives of these intellectual giants, experiencing their philosophical discussions, romantic entanglements, and personal struggles firsthand. He falls for Adriana (Marion Cotillard), Picasso’s current beautiful, young mistress. As Gil immerses himself more and more into the culture of the Jazz Age, the modern world seems increasingly mundane.

Although this description might make Midnight in Paris seem like a sentimental nostalgia trip, it’s much more thematically complicated than this. While Allen clearly has a passion for the era of high artistic Modernism and is living vicariously through his main character, the film’s message has more to do with the present. In a profound scene near the film’s end, Gil has the realization that every generation longs for the vitality of an oft-imagined past. While it’s beneficial to look over one’s shoulder for inspiration, one is not truly living if one isn’t looking for the beauty and magic of the here and now.

One of this movie’s most distinct pleasures is enjoying the subtle performances from the skilled actors. While it would be so tempting to portray such heavyweights as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Salvador Dali via an over-the-top, larger-than-life approach, the players manage to inject these performances with a perfect dose of subtle humanity. Yes, we are watching Ernest Hemingway on the screen. Because Allen and company avoid obvious clichés, though, we get the sense that we see Hemingway as he might have existed, not as he has become in legend.

Woody Allen has been dutifully churning out film after film, year after year. Watching a new Allen film is often a bit of a chore, since it’s almost universally agreed that his best work is behind him. Midnight in Paris, though, represents a huge exception to this perceived rule. I want to avoid falling into the trap that ensnares Owen Wilson’s character. Rather than merely longing for some imagined golden age of Allen films from the past, I want to see the beauty and truth of those being made now. His latest effort makes this exercise extremely easy.