Review: Bon Iver–Bon Iver, Bon Iver

You are not an indie band if you are verified by Twitter.

I’m so sick of hearing about this new album that I am going to listen to it right now as I type this. For the first time with my virgin ears. Thank you Rolling Stone for being one of the million places on the Internet that I can stream this album “exclusively” for free right now.

Anyhow, guess what. Bon Iver has come out with a new self-titled album (oh?!) and there’s absolutely no way that I can talk about it without sounding and feeling like a snotty hipster(?). If I hate it, I simply don’t know good music when I hear it. If I love it, I am following alongside Pitchfork’s compass, who gave this album a 9.5 on their rating scale. Out of 10. Maybe it is good. Maybe it isn’t. Don’t assume I’m qualified to talk with authority about it, because I’m definitely not.

When Wikipedia shows up as the 3rd result on Google following your band’s website and MySpace URL, you are not an indie band.

Bon Iver debuted in 2008, with album “For Emma, Forever Ago,” which consequently re-ignited a renaissance of focus on emotional masculinity in cultural constructs in indie music. Fact: us women inexplicably love the sensitive guys who own acoustic guitars and Moleskines (but always end up dating the assholes? Next Tumblr-dedicated blog?). Grouped alongside male indie heartthrobs, like Sam Beam as Iron and Wine, or Dallas Green as City and Colour, we can’t help but love it, or hate to love it but still like it. The music is soothing, calm, simple and the men behind it are straight-up attractive. I’m not trying to knock the entire genre, but for some reason, there’s something about my inability to escape Bon Iver these days that’s annoying the piss out of me.

I’m now halfway thru the album, and didn’t realize I had been listening to seperate tracks this whole time. It’s all blended by simplistic melodies with soft percussion and I’m lost in a sea of story-teller-esque lyrics and his dreamy, falsetto voice. It’s music to fall asleep to. But I’m too caffienated for that.

I could go on and list a plethora of Internet sources regarding the music’s validity, such as Rolling Stone calling it “excellent,” or Pitchfork exclaming the music and its maker are “irresistable,” etc. but you get the idea. Obviously, this album is riding on a huge wave of mainstream hype and for some reason, I’m indifferent.

I have since completed the album once through. I am having more fun googling and reading about the bearded-former-cabin-dweller-who-now-rolls-with-Kanye (real name Justin Vernon) than listening to the music itself and I have absolutely no desire to listen again. Let’s now over-analyze what that means for me as an individual in context of my alternative generation through a cultural lens and figure out if this means I am “post-indie” or something ridiculous. Just kidding. Someone brainwash me so I can fit in again following this disaterous post.