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Jun 24, 2011he 10 unconventionally structured songs are less shaky-tent-in-a-snowstorm and more ambitious-skyscraper-blasting-into-the sky.
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Jun 24, 2011Bon Iver, Bon Iver is Vernon's triumphant re-emergence from those lonely woods back into the world.
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Jun 22, 2011It's at once majestic and gentle, a deep breath and a sigh that declares Vernon's transcendence of the turmoil and technique of his unique breakout record and establishes him as an artist who knows exactly what he's doing. Hallelujah.
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Jun 16, 2011Bon Iver remains rooted in the emotional sincerity that made Vernon's debut so mesmerising.
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UncutJun 3, 2011Fully realised in its ambition, Bon Iver possesses all the austere beauty and understated emotiveness of its predecessor. [Jul 2011, p.81]
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Jun 20, 2011It's a rare thing for an album to have such a strong sense of what it wants to be. Bon Iver is about flow, from one scene and arrangement and song and memory and word into the next-- each distinct but connected-- all leading to "Beth/Rest".
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Jun 21, 2011But for all its introspection, Bon Iver feels a lot more open than Vernon's previous work, the sound of a lonely guy taking his first steps into a larger world.
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Jun 15, 2011On Bon Iver, his second full-length, an emboldened Vernon achieves a beautiful fantasy all his own, backed by a full band and buoyed with horns and pedal steel.
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Dec 15, 2011Bon Iver sounds distinctively matured and alive on Bon Iver: an album that even still, in the late winter, months after its release sounds magical.
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Sep 9, 2011In an industry flooded with trumpeted artists not worth their weight in salt, Bon Iver's abstract ruminations more than warrant the hype.
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Aug 3, 2011Akin to For Emma, Bon Iver breaks the listener's heart. And to experience an album (an oft-dreaded sophomore album, no less) that evokes such deep emotion is a welcomed pain.
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Jun 29, 2011Where For Emma, Forever Ago thrived on its sparseness, the new record's sound is richly and carefully layered.
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Jun 28, 2011Vernon seems torn between selling his lyrics and using his voice as just another emotional cue in the thick mix. But if you're looking for an album to get lost in, who knew a guy previously feted for stripped-down "realness" would provide the year's best?
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Jun 22, 2011The album is a shoo-in for being a timeless great, no matter what we say. Vernon's got the magic touch. But it's lacking that original sense of urgency that flowed so freely in and out of For Emma, making it so genuine and so incredibly listenable.
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Jun 21, 2011"Emma" was gorgeous in its austerity, but its follow-up is staggering for its vision. Bon Iver's self-titled sophomore release will go down as one of this year's most arresting albums, drunk on its own impressionistic charms and oblivious to anyone's expectations but Vernon's.
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Jun 21, 2011It retains the beautiful melancholy of For Emma, but in nearly every way, it's just more. More layered, more diverse, more interesting.
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Jun 20, 2011The mood of uplifting-melancholia survives and this time out Vernon needs no dramatic backstory. Clearly, his is a talent that loves company as much as it loves misery.
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Jun 17, 2011One of 2011's most absorbing, affecting and downright brilliant LPs.
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May 25, 2011The entire album is a collaborative project, in that sense; yet each song acts like a personal journal entry, documenting Justin Vernon's experience back with the living, after being with the ghosts of memory for some time.
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Jun 20, 2011Bon Iver, Bon Iver settles itself around a more narrative structure, letting the baroque arrangements move from one destination to another.
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Jul 19, 2011Bon Iver, Bon Iver is wrought using a dazzling pointillism. Producer Vernon has carefully studded his album with thousands of cul-de-sacs of grace and poise and lavishly attended precision.
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Jun 23, 2011Few albums are truly perfect though, and Bon Iver is not without its flaw.
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MojoJun 21, 2011Bon Iver's musical palette is a far broader, full blown band affair. [Jul 2011, p.98]
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Jun 21, 2011We can all go on loving For Emma, Forever Ago (with good reason), but don't let your attachment to that obscure what Vernon has created here. No cabin, no crazy backstory. Just a great, inventive album.
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Jun 21, 2011Bon Iver is a brave change in certain places and only a careful departure in others, but its seemingly polar styles blend smoothly as only Vernon is capable of.
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Jun 21, 2011Ultimately, Bon Iver, Bon Iver is the sound of growth, of growing pains, and the sound of grounding, of tearing new ground. If it aches, it aches like any natural growth, with beauty and wonder.
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Jun 20, 2011This is a brave and emboldening record in a frightened world.
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Jun 20, 2011Bon Iver is a marvel.
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Jun 16, 2011A wonderful, worthy follow-up.
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Jun 15, 2011For much of Bon Iver, Vernon takes his cues from Volcano Choir, using an array of disparate instrumentation and looping effects to beautifully eerie effect.
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Jun 15, 2011Justin Vernon and his crew have changed things up here for sure, but the results are every bit as beautiful as you might expect.
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Q MagazineJun 7, 2011The Wisconsin outsider stretches horizons on mesmeric second album. [July 2011, p. 108]
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May 31, 2011Vernon re-accesses that potent sense of self on Bon Iver, a stunning sophomore set whose landscape-painting cover art underscores the idea that his songs inhabit their own psychological space.
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May 27, 2011This is Vernon leaving the seclusion of the forests and, as many of the track titles suggest, moving through towns, cities and open spaces.
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Jun 28, 2011This album just goes to show that when Vernon does manage to find that perfect balance of production and deep-in-the-gut songwriting, it is going to be shattering. Even the harshest critics among us may, for a moment, forget about our thumbs.
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Jun 23, 2011The expansive arrangements fill the edges of Bon Iver, Bon Iver's sound without losing Vernon's haunting aesthetic, balancing both a fullness and ethereality.
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Jun 21, 2011Vernon on Bon Iver solidifies his place not as innovator, but as someone who's found a nice, fertile plot of land somewhere near where folk, rock, R&B and indie rock intersect, and is happy to wander across its great expanse honoring all of it.
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Jun 20, 2011Bon Iver is the sound of a man making peace with the world, saxophones and all.
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May 26, 2011Bon Iver isn't quite a crossover move. Big-pop synths appear, but more in the way a radio hit sounds leaking out of your lover's earbuds.
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Jun 20, 2011The sound is a good deal plusher, the arrangements thickened with pedal steel, saxophone, horns, percussion. But Vernon still sounds like he's back in that Wisconsin cabin that birthed "Emma."
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Jun 21, 2011Despite its hype, its expectations, its blown up sound, and its many production flourishes, Bon Iver is nothing more than a solid placeholder album.
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Jun 21, 2011Perhaps if he were a more skilled producer and arranger, things would have been better. Unfortunately, his style comes off more like sub-Enya with a beard than a true studio wizard.
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May 25, 2011Like Radiohead and Panda Bear before Bon Iver this year, it's not a problem that Vernon hasn't created music in the same style of the last successful album: the problem is that he isn't able to make that creative jump to a new aesthetic, or direction, successfully at all.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 309 out of 348
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Mixed: 27 out of 348
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Negative: 12 out of 348
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Jun 21, 2011
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Jun 21, 2011
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Jun 26, 2011