Bon Iver with Aero Flynn

Bon Iver (Justin Vernon) is a singer/songwriter from Wisconsin whose sparse, otherworldly indie folk has made him an award-winning critical and commercial success. Bon Iver’s debut album For Emma, Forever Ago, became one of the landmark albums of the late-2000s indie folk sound. Vernon’s sparse sound and pure vocals caught the attention of people looking for something folky, yet not folksy in any way. Further albums refining and shifting their sound bolstered Bon Iver’s popularity and widened the band’s fan base. Bon Iver’s latest release, 22, A Million was released in August of 2016 on Jagjaguwar,

The 10 songs of 22, A Million are a collection of sacred moments, love’s torment and salvation, contexts of intense memories, signs that you can pin meaning onto or disregard as coincidence. If Bon Iver, Bon Iver (the follow up to For Emma, Forever Ago, released in 2011) built a habitat rooted in physical spaces, then 22, A Million is the letting go of that attachment to a place. To narrow 22, A Million down to the next step within an “artistic career” would be to miss a far grander purpose of this music – or any music for that matter – and the cultures of friendship that sustain us in our capacities to even play music. Although 22, A Million emerges from a swirling context of transformation in Vernon’s recent life, it is based on how we have always approached what music can be or do. It is not the perceived power of money and fame that will change the course of events in one’s life, but empathy. Music is a pathway that allows us to listen to ourselves and the people that surround us. It is a pathway to understanding that actively creates change in real-time. Music, even in its most intimate moments, is a pathway between us all. It is the nuts and bolts of humanity as well as its totality. It is made sacred between people and in return makes those relationships sacred. It is the buoyant substance that we grab onto when the water rises above our heads. The answer has been here the entire time: just music, always. (Excerpts taken from Biography: 22, A Million 1 August 2016, written by Trever Hagen.)