SABLE, begins with an end. Upon hitting play on Bon Iver's first record in over five years, listeners are greeted with a high-pitched, almost discordant tone. It resembles the un-turn-offable Apple alarm that pierces through the air before a hurricane or an earthquake or, perhaps, the sound of a heart flatlining. Both of these allusions are apt, even if they weren't entirely intentional. To create, Justin Vernon first needed to destroy, to wash away the growing sprawl of artifice, production, symbology, side projects, famous friends, and disguises—beautiful disguises, but disguises nonetheless—that had come to represent the project known as Bon Iver. For his art to continue living, something had to die.
The three new tracks on SABLE, Bon Iver’s new EP, are the most alive Vernon has sounded in years. "Era" may be the most overused word in music right now (thanks to Vernon's frequent collaborator, Taylor Swift), but it's hard to think of a more fitting term for what the artist is beginning on this record, a collection he calls a "retreat and reset" that "emerged from a long-gestating breakdown" just as the COVID-19 pandemic began. SABLE, is both confession and exoneration, an intimate, raw, and aching portrait of an artist striving to reclaim ownership over his own body and mind when, as he sings on the opening track, "I get caught looking in the mirror on the regular, and what I see there resembles some competitor."
It's fitting—and perhaps essential—that this album emerged from a disease-induced lockdown. Nearly two decades ago, Vernon released For Emma, Forever Ago, his first album under the Bon Iver name and the wintry opening to his years-long seasons cycle. As the story goes, Vernon recorded the entirety of the album from the isolation of his father's hunting cabin in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, after he was kicked out of his previous band, lost a relationship, and contracted both mono and liver disease. The conditions surrounding the creation of this EP are almost eerily similar; the artist's note reveals that he "developed literal physical symptoms from deep anxiety and constant pressure" and needed to apologize to "a couple of people he loved and hurt" as a result. ("What is wrong with me? Man, I'm so sorry," he sings on "S P E Y S I D E" in some of his most direct and unadorned lyrics to date.)
As a result, Vernon was finally able to recapture the delicate thing that made that initial moment of artistry so special. These three songs—"THINGS BEHIND THINGS BEHIND THINGS," "S P E Y S I D E," and "AWARDS SEASON"—strip away the heavy layers of electronic ornamentation and fragmentation that defined Vernon’s later works like 22, A Million (2016) and i,i (2019). Those aren't bad albums by any means; far from it. SABLE, just recontextualizes them slightly. Whereas initially, those two records seemed to signal the onset of a never-ending sonic expansion—perhaps at the expense of the genius burning at its core—they now feel a lot closer to what they were meant to signify all along: seasons of abundance that would once again give way to winter, all part of a natural, larger cycle.
What's left when the leaves have all fallen are Vernon's raw vocals, his acoustic guitar (with some very light accompaniment from a few old friends on fiddle, pedal steel, and the like), and his poetry. Despite trading the mechanical pencil of 22, A Million and i,i for a plain old no. 2 on SABLE, Vernon's lyricism is as strong as it's ever been. "I would like the feeling, I would like the feeling, I would like the feeling gone. 'Cause I don't like the way it's, I don't like the way it's, I don't like the way it's looking," he sings in the album's opening lines, orienting listeners to the gathering darkness. ("SABLE, is named for near-blackness, the record an externalized projection of his turmoil," the album note reads.) "I can't go through the motions, I can't go through the motions, how am I supposed to do this now… I am afraid of changing, and when it comes a time to check and rearrange shit, there are things behind things behind things," he sings on the same track. Previously, Vernon hid his wounds behind flowery words and arcane phrasing; now, they’re our wounds too.
But while some lights clearly had to blink out for Vernon to regain his vision, he opens the blinds a bit in EP's tender final track. "You came over, short after it was over, you as precious as a clover in a meadow’s sun. You had no answers, so we laid back to backs, and clasped treasure with our hands, held all fate" he sings almost a cappella, before delivering the final lines: "It's so hard to explain, and the facts are strange, but you know what will stay, everything we've made."
It's fitting that Vernon was recently featured on Charli xcx's "I think about it all the time" remix from her Brat and it’s completely different but also still brat follow-up album. SABLE, sees the artist grapple with the personal cost of celebrity in a similar manner. Both seem to land in the same field; the fame, the fortune, the names on billboards mean nothing if the drive to create something true is stripped away. That's what lasts when the panic attack subsides. Yes, SABLE, closes a chapter, but it also writes the first clause of a whole new sentence. The album ends in a comma, the universal sign for "I'm not done.” Hopefully, we won't see this sentence's final period for many seasons to come.
