Instead of the typical pseudo-definitive ranking of the “Best Albums of 2016,” this December we’re trying something different. The Rutgers Review is bringing you 31 days of our writers’ favorite albums this year, from internationally anticipated releases to local debuts to a few guilty pleasures, without caring what critics have had to say.
Our world is a binary one. We (the privileged, first-world few of us) are immersed in zeroes and ones. This is Bon Iver’s premise; his central problem; his historical evil twin. Bon Iver emerged in 2008 riding the wave of folk renaissance that ushered in artists like Fleet Foxes, Iron & Wine, and Sufjan Stevens. When they debuted, they came as mystical figures for all earthly folk bands. Justin Vernon, lead singer and founder of Bon Iver, wrote his debut album For Emma, Forever Ago in a cabin deep in the woods, the story goes. He and his band stayed there for an entire winter after he broke up with his girlfriend and banged out one of the best folk albums of the 21st century.
22, A Million is a significant departure from those folk days because Bon Iver calls those roots into question. Much like Sufjan Stevens’ 2010 album Age of Adz, this record mixes electronic music with folk tunes as a way to bring the two genres into conversation. In this album, folk music represents Bon Iver’s emotionally honest and pastoral beginning; the band is as spiritual as ever, as emotional as ever, and concerned as ever with personal experience and natural metaphors.
However, the electronic music represents all the destabilizing implications of our technological age. Every song has a number, just like every person has a phone number or a house number or an ID number. Bon Iver presents the human experience in the 21st century as being an inextricable pairing of the electronic and the folksy. Both lyrically and musically, he presents this thesis brilliantly. “33 ‘God’,” “29 #Stafford APTS,” and “715 – CRΣΣKS” are the stand out songs, though there are very few flops, if any.
“715 – CRΣΣKS,” an a cappella song performed with heavy autotune like Imogen Heap’s “Hide and Seek,” is dense with sentiments about love and imagery of creeks, herons, and the “low moon” that “don[s] the yellow road.” This contrast between autotune and traditional folk content is exemplified in the line “Honey, understand that I have been left here in the reeds.” As a metaphor, it captures the feeling of isolation and neglect from an old lover who spurns the singer and leaves him “in the reeds.” However, the line turns on the word “reeds” creating a second reading that means “I have been left here in the reads,” likening the experience of emotional neglect to the experience of getting a read receipt on your text message.
The ambiguity of this line speaks volumes about the project as a whole. It’s a thoughtful consideration of the millennial experience. It attempts to synthesize our emotional, creative minds with our mathematical realities, and Bon Iver succeeds in doing so. Despite some fallbacks in the production of songs like “10 d E A T h b R E a s T ⚄ ⚄,” the album is a touching and patient exploration of an issue that lies just beneath the surface of every millennial’s life – an issue that, on this record, finally takes center stage.
by: Samuel Shopp