Bon Iver + Other Lives - Edgefield (Portland, OR; Sept. 24, 2011)

Writing about the music Justin Vernon makes as Bon Iver feels more and more like trying to write about Robert E. Lee or the Pythagorean theorem. It’s a subject where the rules have been defined and lines drawn in the sand. That is, everyone, it seems, already knows where they stand and why. The divergence in sentiments about this music are not so black and white as you like it or you don’t. Instead, they are better understood by differentiating between those who still feel like they’re out there in that secluded cabin and those who have rejoined civilization. It’s really about whether that warm feeling has gotten away from you (or if it was ever there in the first place). Where you eventually stand is also defined, in part, by the way his music has changed over the past three years and, in part, by the way your own changes have aligned with Vernon’s own unfolding as songwriter and celebrity.

This vector necessarily becomes personal because Bon Iver’s music succeeds (or not) based on how cozy it makes the listener feel. The first record had this working for it from the beginning. For Emma, Forever Ago’s back story was powerful because even if you didn’t relate to its story directly, some part of his reckoning probably resonated with something you’ve experienced. It was an album about finding peace after everything concrete in your life breaks down: your relationships, your band, your health. To make that album, he had to retreat to the Wisconsin woods and come up with a sound that offered a fresh grammar for a certain type of desolation. In turn he created a uniquely intimate relationship between singer-songwriter and listener. On the new album, Bon Iver, he’s feeling out different ideas about isolation that have less to do with a specific moment in time. Now, we’re sitting here with up to nine musicians in our headphones playing out more expansive aesthetic and emotional visions. To many people’s chagrin, it’s no longer just Justin and us. Yet somehow there are still moments where you can feel like you’re in that small rustic room – just in a different way.

The show this past Saturday evening at Edgefield was the final of this year’s summer lawn series. They couldn’t have planned it better as the fall clouds slowly covered the sky, hour by hour. A light sprinkling of raindrops early in the night felt like a warning that none of it should be taken for granted.

Other Lives opened the show. It quickly made sense why they were tapped to set the evening’s table, if we’re speaking strictly in terms of the parameters of their sound. The band featured seven musicians playing an array of instruments, creating a huge noise that swept over the lawn with ease. The content of that noise pulled itself from many familiar corners of the indie rock universe. I could hear The Decemberists’ sea shanties in their frolicking string arrangements, Beirut’s Balkan folk in the harmonic orchestrations, and front man Jesse Tabish’s nasally tenor is unmistakably reminiscent of Interpol’s Paul Banks. Playing songs from their new LP, Tamer Animals, they put on a buoyant show with some charged moments (the building string swell in “Landfallen” was a highlight). But their aesthetic runs a bit too close to their band name – a collage of comfortable, recognizable indie-folk tropes without a unique binding agent. I was left wondering the real identity of Other Lives. But perhaps I was unfairly anticipating the headlining band all along. 

Bon Iver took the stage, well after the sun had set, just before 8pm. Not that there was a need for extra lighting. The band’s entrance featured a procession of nine scruffy guys taking their positions to a backdrop of radiant shining lights. The visual friction between the tour-worn musicians and glossy stage production was a staggering first sight. It felt like a declaration that, yes, this project is now so much bigger than anyone could have imagined – even the band.  All the stage production – the flashing lights (sometimes distracting) persisted throughout their set - threatened to create an even greater distance between performers and audience in an already large space. But they launched into “Perth,” the opening track on Bon Iver, with its portentous, epic guitar lead, and moment-by-moment, the glitzy façade fell away.

The beginning of their set leaned heavy on the new record (“Perth” – “Minnesota, WI” – “Calgary” – “Towers”). Although the band stuck close to the song structures throughout the night, they played with a focused easiness. They filled the air with rippling sound colors that were skillfully arranged and improvised within the confines of each composition. Vernon’s voice was extraordinary. The smooth contours between his chest rumble and falsetto moan created an instrument that was complex and rich with information. Only Colin Stetson, the band’s primary saxophonist, standing right behind Vernon, had moments that matched Vernon’s virtuosic performance. His extended noise solo leading into “Blood Bank” was particularly beautiful and impressive for the way he led the ear at once towards the rhythmic slapping of his fingers and then to the swirling textures flowing from his horn. 

They played every song from the new album, half of the first record, and squeezed in a cover of Bob Dylan’s “With God On Our Side” (Vernon: “This is for the Americans out there”). Even if Bon Iver’s past tours were physically closer and warmer than this one, this show achieved a musical intimacy that I’ve rarely felt in a space this large. Perhaps this is because I find the new record to be particularly spiritual, and the musicians on stage took special care in tending to its negative spaces and dynamic currents. It’s also Vernon’s powerful voice that reaches out and into you. Sometimes you don’t know exactly what he’s saying, but that rich timbre makes it all feel elemental and meaningful.

Vernon performed “Re:Stacks” alone to an utterly silent audience. A plane flew overhead in the middle of the song, shaking the empty air, and you could sense the stillness - that familiar feeling of lying awake at night in a tent (or cabin) in the woods. The crowded lawn at Edgefield shrunk away. No matter where you stand, or what you’ve read, I think you’d agree this was a pretty special thing. 

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