On the second of a four night stand at Radio City Music Hall, Justin Vernon is bantering uneasily with members of the audience; he is a little awkward in everyman mode: after all, this is the guy who, in best Unabomber fashion, locked himself in a wooden hut in the middle of a forest in the middle of nowhere to write and record his debut album, For Emma, Forever Ago, so people skills must not come easy. The Sheldon Cooper of rock and roll slurps his drink and replies to some request or another with a not unfriendly, "We are not complete dicks, you know".
And if the entire point of Justin's band stand at Radio City was to prove they were not complete dicks: mission accomplished. In a breathtakingly beautiful and powerful 90 minute set, Bon Iver rebooted the franchise and Justin Vernon shrugged off his Nick Drake with worse songs but a better voice, and emerged as a serious front man and rock and roll star.
Just about from the get go Bon Iver were a band, with Justin leaning hard into them, letting them thrive. With that unbelievable falsetto, the assumption is that Iver is going to keep the music low key and play in dark lights, you don't expect Art Garfunkel to front the Clash. Helen Bach recommended I take my jammies. But he didn't let the voice take us wherever he wanted us to go, he let the music hold us in its sway and the voice augmnent but not overwhelm it. It felt like a rock and roll show, the light show was lovely, eight musicians crowded (no, not crowded, it was Radio City which has a huge stage), including a trumpet and two guitarists, and they played a selection off their two albums, though they passed on "Flume". "There's a strict curfew" we were warned.
The songs were longer then on record, less stretched and more deepened. By the second song, a twisting and stunning "Minnesota, WI", it was obvious I for one had misread the band. They aren't a jam band, they aren't psychedelic, the sound too rustic, but they aren't a folk band either, they are an ambient rock band on the same side of street as Sonic Youth. And they don't improvise. The set was tight and purposeful.
It's about here I should admit that I have done nothing but dismiss Bon Iver for 4 years: my friend Marie Lynn (she reviewed the Nashville music fest for us back in 2009) got it right when she explained that she didn't like the band either till one day she realized she'd picked up 15 of their tracks along the way. For me, Justin Vernon is too damn precious, and it annoys me. It is too emotionally distinct and simultaneously vapid. You wanna tell him that is selfish to go on and on about his inner love life. It is solipsistic and egotistical.
But I was always writing: oh and here is the exception that proves the rules. How many exceptions can there be before the rule is wrong? The set ended with an astonishing "Beth/Rest": an intense and haunting song that went on and forward and double back and built, built and built some more, with Justin moving from keyboards to guitar and back to keyboards and the band sounding like one of Van Morrison's better back up bands. There was something of the "Celtic Ray" about the song. To be honest, they could've played it all night long and gotten no complaints from me. It was even better than a solo acoustic "Re:Stacks" -Justin chose his best written song to just show us he can roll either way, sparse and small or detailed and big.
The encore was "Skinny Love" and "For Emma" and really, what else can you ask for? Played as straight as possible, they were both successful and a wonderful gift to the audience. As I was leaving I was talking to a teenage guy and he said it was the best concert he'd ever seen. He seemed a little in shock and he wasn't alone.I don't see how Bon Iver could have played better, more intensely beautiful hard rocking landscape. From feedback white noise to guitar interplays and to horns, horns and more horns, a great achievement, a new vision of what we had already seen and dismissed.
if Justin has any sense at all he would be listening to tapes and putting together a live album as I write. It'd be a lot more than a recherchez de temp perdu, but rather a calling card for the beautiful visions awaiting us.
Grade: A