On the last night of a ten day tour in support of their second album, the recently released Repave, one of the Volcano Choir’s who isn’t Justin Vernon, guitarist and main songwriter Chris Rosenau, tells us that since is the end they will be playing everything they know. Whether they did not I can’t tell you because I rushed off to catch another gig an hour in, but given that it was a Saturday night in Webster Hall and was therefore rebooked for an 11pm disco party, I guess that means they know 90 minutes of material.
And the hour I saw was simply terrific. Volcano Choir have a few arty feedbacky ones, but they also have some melodic mood music. It isn’t quite ambient music, though it fits in there. The band comes on to a dark stage and your heart kinda sings because you just know it is gonna be 90 minutes of drone in the dark with Justin hiding somewhere in the background because he doesn’t wanna be the center of attraction any more and it isn’t that at all. “Tiderays” is a gorgeous song and the stage is light and Justin, who sings all the songs as well as plays keyboards, is very into it, and drummer Jon Mueller is probably the single most important member!
When the band formed in 2005, they were essentially A Collection Of Bees plus Justin Vernon, but it was a loose conglom, and Justin left to turn into the Unabomber of pop and form Bon Iver. Two Bon Iver albums and two and a half years in the making follow up to the nothing special first Volcano Choir album, Volcano Choir are in town to push the very special indeed Repave.
Apparently, Chris did most of the writing, Bon all of the singing, and as Chris put it to Pitchfork: “We’re not just sitting down at a piano and putting chords together. We’re cutting up a sample for the verse and then processing some weird sound for the chorus– and then getting it to sound like a song.”
On the album it sounds like a wall of gorgeous sound with songs sticking out and on stage it is endearing and holds your interest. The band are touring in segments, a couple of Mid West gigs in October, a West Coast gig in January and Saturday night, the final evening they say goodbye to opening band Sylvan Esso. “We’re going to have to get blind drunk”, because they’ll be missed so much, Justin claims.
The duo, vocalist Amelia Meath and electronic musician Nick Sanborn, from Mountain Man and Megafun, are being a little disingenuous when they act as though they’ve just won the lottery supporting Volcano Choir, but maybe not. They play “Hey Mami” and end with”Play It Right” and they are poppy and smart but cmon, they’d have killed at 30 minutes but at 45…
Volcano Choir were great at an hour when I left and I bet were great for the rest of the time. Justin says he will be only working with Volcano Choir for the time being, which, unless things change, means no new Justin songwriting, but I doubt he will maintain that position for long. If he can break up with Kathleen Edwards the man must be moody.
For now, the two new songs were fine and the set was impressive big time modern rock music.
Grade: B+