Bon Iver — “Skinny Love”

Pack up your winter gear—we’re headed to the Wisconsin woods. This week, Rob retreats into Justin Vernon’s cabin to remember the buzzy indie album ‘For Emma, Forever Ago,’ which launched the career of the eventual Grammy-winning band Bon Iver. He looks back on how critics and audiences were enamored with the narrative that Vernon wrote the album while heartbroken and alone in the woods, and the way his voice conveyed those feelings. Later, Rob’s joined by The New York Times’ Jon Caramanica to discuss if “Skinny Love” possibly led to “stomp-clap” music and what collaborators like Kanye West and Taylor Swift heard in Bon Iver. (00:00) Intro: Neko Case’s voice as a force of nature (30:19) This week’s song: “Skinny Love” by Bon Iver (32:36) Justin Vernon’s (many) early bands (48:29) Bon Iver’s abstract lyrics (55:05) “Skinny Love” and the narrative of ‘For Emma, Forever Ago’ (01:04:57) Interview with Jon Caramanica (01:33:25) Outro Host: Rob Harvilla Guest: Jon Caramanica Producers: Julianna Ress, Chris Sutton, Justin Sayles, and Olivia Crerie CONNECT Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/60songsthatexplainthe90s TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@60songsthatexplainthe90s Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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  Sometimes I want to hear a voice that sounds like the singer is holding my hand and gently guiding me through a deep, dark, engulfing forest and protecting me from the wolves and the grizzly bears and the cackling witches and the various other apex predators. Sometimes I want to hear a voice that sounds like one of those bloodthirsty apex predators is personally chasing me through a deep, dark, engulfing forest and currently chewing my leg off. And sometimes I want to hear a voice that sounds like the deep, dark, engulfing forest itself.

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  Chimney falls and lovers blaze. Thought that I was young. Now I freeze in hands and bloodless veins, as numb as I've become.

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  Her name is Neko Case, N-E-K-O. Admiring critics on the internet have variously described Niko's voice as a flamethrower, a powerhouse that seems like it might level buildings, and 120 mile-per-hour fastball, and a vocal tornado. I just looked it up and flamethrower is me? Flamethrower was my description, apparently, from an interview I did with her in 2018, but actually flamethrower is my least favorite of those descriptions. I feel like I could have tried a little harder to do justice to Neko Case's voice. The song is called "I Wish I Was the Moon," from her 2002 album, Blacklisted. Back when my wife and I first

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  started dating, back when I was wooing my future bride with mixtapes full of flirtatious and/or profound songs like "Do You Realize?" by The Flaming Lips and "The Scientist" by Coldplay, back then I thought of "I Wish I Was the Moon" as our song, right? As a glorious testament to the untameable profundity of our young love. I guess when you've got a singing voice, like an 120 mile-an-hour fastball, you can make lines like "As numb as I've become" sound romantic. Same deal with "I'm so tired."

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  I'm so tired. I wish I was the moon tonight.

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  And I get it. The line "I wish I was the moon tonight" sounds colossally swooningly romantic, especially, three adverbs in four words, especially when delivered by a powerhouse, flamethrowing, tornado vocalist, howling at the moon so ferociously that you can hear the moon howling back. It is the electric, the invigorating, the life-affirming way Neko Case bellows the words "I'm so tired." She is your gentle, kindly grandmother, here to guide you to her cozy cabin in the deep, dark, engulfing forest and clothe and feed and protect you. She is the big, bad wolf, lying in your kindly, freshly-dead grandmother's

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  bed and dressed in her clothes, here to feed upon you. Dig this lady's voice, man. Holy shit. It is the cataclysmic thunderbolt of the line "'Cause I had sold my soul," here. A thunderbolt striking a 300-foot redwood tree. Neko Case is both the thunderbolt and the towering redwood. She is Mother Nature herself, though her definition of motherly may differ violently from yours. Neko Case is not here to protect you, no, but it's quite soothing, the way she conveys the idea that nothing and no one is here to protect you, but the world can still be a startlingly beautiful place.

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  Last night I dreamed I'd forgotten my name, 'cause I sold my soul, but I woke just the same.

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  One way to force yourself to understand that "I Wish I Was the Moon" is not a simple, starry-eyed, young love song is to just cut out the part where she actually sings the line "I wish I was the moon tonight." And then you're like, oh, wait, this song is desolate and devastating, actually. Neko Case was born in Alexandria, Virginia, but moved around a lot as a little kid before settling in Tacoma, Washington, though settling is maybe too permanent and calm and nurturing a word to describe her family situation. Niko had a hard, impoverished, neglected, almost feral childhood. She has spoken extensively in interviews about how both her parents were young when she was born and her parents

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  both clearly did not want her. In 2025, she published a memoir called "The Harder I Fight, The More I Love You," where Niko tells the story of being a little kid and being abruptly told her mother had died of cancer. There was no warning or buildup at all. Niko was just told that her mom died. So now she's had a big, grim, surreal family wake for her mother and now it's just Niko and her dad for a year and a half. And then one day, Niko's mother reappears, alive. Her mom had just faked her death and moved to Hawaii for a while. Their mother-daughter situation does not improve from there. In her book,

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  Niko writes about making music as a soft rebellion against a harsh and uncaring universe. Talking about her childhood, she says, quote, "There are stretches of time that add up to literal years that I don't remember, just because I was so sad. I mourn those years. The happiness of the soft rebellion, however, holds those years in its arms and hums and sways. It is a real and loving home," end quote. That does not mean Neko Case writes or sings love songs in the conventional sense. "I Wish I Was the Moon," for example, is about her father, and let's just say that's not a happy, nurturing story either.

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  God bless me, I'm a free man with no place free to go.

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  Yeah, there's me humming and swaying and thinking about my future wife to a song with a second verse that goes, "God blessed me, I'm a free man with no place free to go, paralyzed and collared tight, no pills for what I fear." Initially, I thought that last line was "no pills for what I feel," but no, it's "no pills for what I fear," which is somehow infinitely worse. If you don't know Nico Case, but you have a vague sense, you've heard this song, "I Wish I Was the Moon," before, perhaps you recall it from a 2011 episode of that HBO sexy vampire show True Blood, where Alexander Skarsgård and Anna Paquin get butt-ass naked

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  and have sex in the forest under, you know, the moon.

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  For me, it's the way Nico belts out, "I'll be the one, be the one, be the one," there. This howl of abject lonesomeness that can't help but sound triumphant, just because it's Nico Case doing the howling. I'm very sorry, but I can't show you the actual scene from True Blood where they do it in the woods while "I Wish I Was the Moon" is playing, because there's hella nudity, and I don't want to get kicked off YouTube. Getting on YouTube was harder than we expected, and I ain't about to let Eric and Sookie screw it up for me. You know, I didn't watch True Blood, but my wife did, and it sure did seem to me like that show was just various sexy vampires going, "Sookie."

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  In 2013, Nico Case played this cool old theater in San Francisco called The Warfield, and a writer for SF Weekly went and wrote about it and reported that before Nico played "I Wish I Was the Moon," Nico says, quote, "This is a tender love song I wrote for my dad that became the theme for a vampire fuckfest. It's okay, he doesn't care, he's dead," end quote. Amazing. Nico Case talks like that and sings like this.

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  Sometimes you want a voice that sounds like a giant anthropomorphized fist that emerges out of the speaker and punches you in the face. The song is called "Caroline," with a K, and it appears on Nico's 1997 debut album, The Virginian, credited to Nico Case and her boyfriends. Nico just sang the words, "The path you walk is on fire, so wild and unashamed," just in case you were too busy getting punched in the face by a giant anthropomorphized fist to notice. I don't know if I really like this giant fist descriptor either, but it's better than flamethrower. There is a delightful and vicious country twang in Nico's voice, a Loretta Lynn and

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  Tammy Wynette sort of Fist City, "You're good, girl's gonna go bad" sort of deal. But there is punk rock, too. There is a gleeful, scrappy, chaotic, ferocious self-reliance. Nico lived in Vancouver for a while and played drums in some rad punk bands. I just immediately flipped out over this person's voice. Right? The national monument, eighth wonder of the world, a deep echo immensity of her voice. First time I heard Nico Case sing, I knew I would follow her anywhere, forever. And indeed, sometimes, she is leading me to a specific geographical location.

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  This specific geographical location is her adopted hometown of Tacoma, Washington, the echo, the reverb, the sense of infinite physical space surrounding Nico Case's voice at all times. That song is called "Thrice All-American," from the second Nico Case and her boyfriend's album, released in 2000 and called "Furnace Room Lullaby." On the album cover, Nico is lying near dead, or possibly full dead, on what appears to be the floor of the titular furnace room. "Furnace Room Lullaby," the song, is a murder ballad, naturally. Not every great Nico Case song starts with her singing a cappella and sounding like

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  a sniper rifle with a fog light attached to it, but many of her great songs do.

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  It's the way the word "here" warps and cracks and withers down to nothing and then magically resurrects itself when Nico Case sings the word "here." Forget the sniper rifle, fog light description, though, that's weird, and now I'm trying too hard. Nico Case's third album is released in 2002, and it's called Blacklisted. On the album cover, Nico Case is once again sprawled out on the ground, but she ain't dead this time. I think she's just pulling something out of a wheel well on her van while a plane flies overhead. Sneaky, fantastic album cover, Blacklisted, the longer I look at it. The second phase of your Nico Case obsession is connecting her startling physical voice

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  with her equally startling writing voice, the malevolent, brother's grim and rapturing sumptuousness of it. You recoil in fear even as you lean in closer. You can so vividly see and smell and taste Nico Case's songs. This is from a murder ballad called "Deep Red Bells," and to my mind, you can taste the sensation of being poor and small. You can feel the sensation of being poor and small in your suddenly tiny and prematurely withered bones.

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  But really, it's the very subtle vocal harmony on the words "in summer" there that'll clonk you on the head and leave you lying dead on the floor of the furnace room. At the time, in 2002, people just naturally assumed that Nico Case called this album Blacklisted in reference to an infamous 2001 incident, where she got invited to play an outdoor show at the Grand Ole Opry Plaza in Nashville, a huge honor for any country music fan, of course. But it got so hot onstage, Nico almost got heat stroke, so she took her shirt off onstage strictly as an emergency cooling measure, and nonetheless got banned from the Grand Ole Opry.

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  More importantly, Blacklisted, that's the record with "I Wish I Was the Moon" on it. And also a tender and incomprehensibly vicious song called "Pretty Girls," that I really want to talk about, but another time. As a gift to myself, I'm leaving myself a window here to talk about Nico Case some more later. Same deal with The New Pornographers, the exceedingly rad and mostly Canadian power pop band Nico's been in for 25-plus years now. Another time, I promise. Nico's next record is a 2004 live album called The Tigers Have Spoken. The album cover is a black and white drawing of a tiger biting into a deer's neck with

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  spots of red blood running down, and Nico Case's name is printed in blood-red letters as well. That's the album where she sings a new, extra-vulcanic song called "Favorite," but I prefer the informal YouTube version of Favorite, where Nico sings it while sitting in bed with her dog, Liza, and the dog stretches out a paw and physically tries to stop Nico from playing guitar.

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  Ready, Liza?

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  I re-watch this video every couple of months as a sort of spiritual reset. This is a video Nico did in 2011 for a charity event called the 826 National Mercury Cougarama Muscle Car Explosion. Nico's high note on this song favorite is really, really, really, really something, even if here she initially flubs the chord change underneath it. Don't worry, Liza the dog grudgingly helps her out.

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  Well, that's an F there, isn't it? Your favorite. That's right, thank you, Liza.

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  The dog doesn't actually help at all, but I have no doubt that Liza's presence is tremendously calming. If you read Nico Case's memoir, or consult any interview with her, or really even if you listen to any one random Nico Case song, you are struck immediately by her intense and almost supernatural connection with nature, with trees, with this spectacular and almost ecstatically dangerous animal kingdom. The second chapter of her memoir is titled "I Make Horses Appear," and it discusses the time Nico was a little kid, standing on her front porch, and she got mad that she wasn't around horses. And so she decided she wanted to see a horse right now, and quote, "So I clinch focused

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  as hard as I could, like a toad-sized Olympic kegeling wizard, errrr," end quote, and suddenly two horses appeared. Two ladies riding horses emerged out of an alleyway, one of the biggest moments of Nico's life. She writes, quote, "At 52 years old, I can still see the horses clear as day," end quote. In 2006, Nico puts out an album called Fox Confessor Brings the Flood. In my experience, you can spend a long time looking at this album cover, a cool children's book-type drawing of a dark-haired lady surrounded by reverent foxes, before you realize that

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  the dark-haired lady has hooves instead of feet, and she's holding a severed head. Lately, I've been getting into this song called "Dirty Knife."

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  The dramatic orchestral swoops there are a more recent addition to her sound, do, do, do, do, do, do, but lyrically, extreme isolation, macabre nursery rhymes, animals both real and hallucinated, these are central Nico Case themes in both her art and her life. Her memoir can be impossibly heavy. She's a product of prolonged parental neglect. She's a rape survivor. She talks about feeling rage and feeling hatred. But what I ultimately get out of a Nico Case song is another better, or at least more vivid, universe, governed by its own laws, teeming with its own wildlife.

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  It's possible a songwriter is just someone who imagines another world because the real world has failed them. Talking to Psychology Today in 2025, that's a new one, Nico has asked how her solitude affected her songs, and she says, quote, "I always think about Bjork, how English is her second or third language, and how the way she uses English is distilled through her learning it in England. And I think she writes some of the most beautiful poetry in English because it was not her first language. Sometimes I wonder if it's had that effect on me, too. English is my first language, but I didn't use it as much as other languages, just because

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  I didn't have anyone to really talk to as a kid," end quote. You add all this up, all this beauty and all this ugliness, all this natural and majestically unnatural splendor, and you get one of my favorite singers ever. Because with Nico Case, you don't have to choose. She can be the big bad wolf. She can be the fierce mother goat who protects you from the big bad wolf, and she could be the deep, dark, engulfing forest itself. She can be Mother Earth, upon whom you can rely, but on whom you should never turn your back.

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  My favorite Nico Case album came out in 2009 and is called Middle Cyclone. Nico appears on the album cover, holding a sword and posing triumphantly on the hood of a dark red 1967 Mercury Cougar. That's the car Nico's giving away in the charity video where she's playing the song with her dog. Middle Cyclone features Nico's gargantuan cover of the Sparks song "Never Turn Your Back on Mother Earth." Towns are hurled from A to B by hands that looked so smooth to me. There is no line between natural beauty and natural disaster. There is no line between being a figurative force of nature and being a literal force of nature.

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  You know Sparks, right? The fantastic 50-plus-year-old LA art rock band Sparks? All-time great American weirdos. Edgar Wright, the Shaun of the Dead guy, he did a whole rad documentary about them. Just in case this never comes up again for your reference, the best Sparks song came out in 2006 and is called "Dick Around."

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  Speaking of majestic, flamethrowing vocal tornadoes, I don't know why everybody's got cat heads in the "Dick Around" video. First of all, I didn't know Sparks made a video for "Dick Around." That's awesome. But yeah, why the cat heads, do you think? Is it because cats dick around a lot? That's it, isn't it? All cats do is dick around. All right, we figured that one out. Awesome. My favorite Nico Case album, Middle Cyclone, starts with my favorite Nico Case song, which is called "This Tornado Loves You."

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  The line "I left them motherless, fatherless," hits much harder when you've read maybe too much about Nico Case. The lines "Their souls dangling inside, out from their mouths, but it's never enough, I want you" hit incredibly hard, whether you know too much about this person or nothing about this person. My favorite Nico Case song includes my favorite Nico Case line, which is "What Will Make You Believe Me."

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  That's Nico doing "This Tornado Loves You" on David Letterman in 2009. I love the deceptive calm of Nico's face. I love the angelic, black-clad quartet of backup singers, hammering home how lovely and terrifying the line "This Tornado Loves You" is. But yeah, mostly I love the way Nico belts out "What Will Make You Believe Me." I am struggling at the moment to think of a single line from a pop song that means more to me. I am failing to think of one. Every time I listen to "This Tornado Loves You," I stop thinking about whatever I'm thinking about. If I'm driving, I come to a dead stop, even if I'm on the highway, just so I am better

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  able to fully and purely receive the line "What Will Make You Believe Me?" with absolutely no distractions. Every song, every singer, every individual line I've ever heard in my life, the subtext of every line has been a singer asking the listener, "What will make you believe me?" Nico Case, literally asking, "What will make you believe me?" That is the one moment in pop music history when I truly believe. And so I've spent my life seeking out other national monument, natural disaster voices like that. I suppose we all do.

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  This singer is a guy named Justin DiArmond Edison Vernon. Justin is from Eau Claire, Wisconsin. Justin is best known professionally as the leader of, but more to the point, the corporeal manifestation of the band Bonivair. Two words, B-O-N-I-V-E-R. Bonivair, it's French for good winter. If you pronounce it Bon Iver, nobody's gonna beat you up, though, because this ain't that kind of band. This song is called Flume. Only love is all maroon. Gluey feathers on a flume. Sky is womb and she's the moon. That's probably what Justin is saying. What this dude means by what he's saying is another matter entirely.

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  What he means exactly might be immaterial. What he means is just a distraction. You get what you need in terms of musical and emotional and spiritual understanding. You get all that simply out of Justin's voice. The soothing eeriness of it, the indestructible vaporousness of it, the ghostly inscrutability. He is the lone figure in the cabin in the woods. He is the wolf at the door. He is the deep, dark, engulfing forest itself. And she, she, meanwhile, she is the moon.

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  This song is called Blindsided. Taut line, down to the shoreline, the end of a bloodline. The moon is a cold light. It took Justin a long time to sing even that much, but the long pauses between lines, the gentle unhurriedness, the patience that implies both total confidence and utter devastation. The empty space between the lines is fuller and heavier than the lines themselves. She is the moon and she is a cold light. It's that kind of band.

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  This song is called The Wolves. Actually, the full title is The Wolves, Act One and Two. It's that kind of band. The loopy jolt in his voice on the word mourning there is really something. This guy's got a black coffee sort of voice. So we got a lone man, often backed by a lone acoustic guitar here, harmonizing angelically, angels wearing all black, from the sound of it. But yes, harmonizing angelically with himself. Justin is a young man going through a tough breakup from both a band and a lady or two. And so he isolates himself in a hunting cabin an hour northwest of Eau Claire, Wisconsin. And he records a life-changing, legend-solidifying,

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  era-defining indie record that's much cooler than mine, that's got all these songs on it. The isolated cabin is important. The absent girl who is the moon, who is a cold light, is important. The wolves at the cabin door are important. The wolves perhaps at either side of the cabin door. The voice, though. It's his voice that transcends the words themselves, the meaning of the words themselves. The details don't matter. The narrative doesn't matter if you don't fall for the voice, if you don't believe the voice. It is the sort of voice even a devoted pop music lover can spend a lifetime looking for. How will you know if you found me at last?

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  Because I'll be the one, be the one, be the one with my heart in my lap.

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  My name is Rob Harvilla. This is the 53rd episode of 60 Songs That Explain the 90s, Cole and the 2000s. And this week, we are discussing Skinny Love by Bonivair from their 2007 album For Emma, Forever Ago. Towns are hurled from A to B every time Justin Vernon sings the word told. And I told you to be balanced. And I told you to be kind. You might gather it was a super rough breakup with the girl who's the moon, who's a cold light, whoever she is. Turns out, Justin was thinking of a few girls, possibly. Emma is potentially more of a composite and a vibe, et cetera.

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  Sad boys with guitars sing angry songs about girls all the time, of course. But very few of those sad boys sound like their souls are dangling inside out from their mouths. Ad break. Sheesh.

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• 34:56Speaker 00

  All right, you're supposed to hate your hometown, right? Such is the nature of existence. You're born against your will. You got your parents, these people you've never met before, and hopefully, they agree to raise you, whatever the phrase raise you means to them. But now you're stuck with these people. You've just got to live wherever those people live, I guess. And eventually, you go to high school there, and somehow, you survive high school. And then you get the fuck out of town, and that's that. Getting out is the whole point. Getting out is the American way. Getting out is the very essence of rock and roll. My family, we live now like five miles from my wife's childhood home in Ohio.

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  My wife and I lived in other, cooler places for 10 years, but now we're back. And sometimes lately, we'll be driving around now, and my wife will say, you know, when I was younger, I really, really wanted to get out of here. And that always makes me a little nervous. One reason to wish you were the moon is that the moon is very far away. So the first thing we got to do is figure out what's the deal with this guy, Justin Vernon, in the city of Eau Claire, Wisconsin, a once-booming lumber town, a dusty old jewel at the confluence of the Eau Claire and Chippewa rivers. A town renowned for its natural beauty. Eau Claire is French for clear waters, basically,

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  and its scrappy, artsy, independent spirit. Justin Vernon is born in Eau Claire in 1981. His parents, Gil and Justine, are both musically inclined and very supportive. What we will quickly learn about Justin in his pre-indie rock fame era is that this dude just tries stuff. He forms radically different bands, and he tries out radically different singing and songwriting voices. In high school, Justin starts his first band called Mount Vernon. Pretty great name, honestly. Here is video footage of Mount Vernon playing a high school battle of the bands in 1998. Justin sounds a whole lot like the guy from Sublime,

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  if that's something you need to prepare yourself for.

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  I told you he sounds like Bradley Noel from Sublime. Justin sounds jovial and verbose and encouraging. And he also sounds literally like a teenager. Also, teenage Justin ain't got his iconic, big, unruly beard yet. That's a Mount Vernon song called "Today Is Just a Day." Mount Vernon are a full horn section ska reggae pop operation. You want to know who won the battle of the bands? This video provides that information. Okay, here's your winners. Third place, winning $100, Montezuma's Revenge. Great band name, it's classic. Second place, winning $200, Cleveland Tea Sweet Meat. I think that's what this band is called.

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  Here, you listen to the chill polite announcer guy in the security t-shirt.

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  In second place, winning $200, Cleveland Tea Sweet Meat.

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  That's what he said, right? I'm pretty sure that's what he said, and I'm positive that at least one young lady in this crowd is extremely psyched about Cleveland Tea Sweet Meat. Anyway, Mount Vernon take first place. They win the battle of the bands. They win $300 and they get to play in encore. Congratulations. $300, it's like $20 a band member. Justin Vernon grows up in Eau Claire, and man, he loves this place. Upon surviving and graduating high school, Justin very much does not get the fuck out. Instead, he majors in Religious Studies and minors in Women's Studies at the University of Wisconsin Eau Claire. In 2001, the year he turns 20 years old,

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  Justin Vernon puts out his first solo album, under the name JD Vernon. The album is called "Home Is." Now Justin sounds a whole lot like the guy from Counting Crows, if you need to prepare yourself for that.

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  I told you he sounds like Counting Crows' frontman, Adam Duritz. The modest swagger with which Justin delivers the line, "And the wind comes and blows it all away," has an especially Duritzian flair, does it not? This song is called "Feel the Light." This album, "Home Is," it's got a remarkable album cover. It's a photograph of young Justin and his guitar in romantic gunslinger silhouette, bathed in a gorgeous sunrise or sunset. You got the wire fence, you got the house in the distance, you got trees and so forth. You got an awfully striking bucolic troubadour vibe. You've got a startling rootedness. You've got a fully developed sense of place,

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  not often evident in a 20-year-old. You got a guy who belongs there. He loves this place. He is this place. And his love only grows even though winter is coming.

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  "The Moon is Almost Warming Us." Talking to The Guardian in 2008, in an article headlined "Cabin Fever." Once we get to the part where Justin's famous, get ready to hear about this cabin like a lot. We're talking copious cabin discourse here. Talking to The Guardian, Justin says, quote, "Even as a teenager, I was already worried that I wanted to live there my whole life. Like, dude, you should probably not love it so much here. But the idea that I could live in Eau Claire and I could not know every nook and cranny, I think it's pretty telling how widely traveled people are, and yet they never maybe examine where they are as much as they could.

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  I really like locality. I like permanence. I like people being in one place and knowing it." End quote. I'm gonna play you the rap song now. Prepare yourself.

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  Shout out Los Angeles Lakers power forward and four-time NBA champion Kurt Rambis, who was evidently crazy. That's another track on this "Home Is" album called "Mourning (AM)," which does indeed feature young Justin Vernon very enthusiastically rapping alongside his brother Nate Vernon, who raps under the name Idea. I period D period E period A. If that stands for something, keep me out of it. In 2005, now just recording under the name Justin Vernon, our hero returns with his second solo album called "Self-Record." I am drawn to a song called "Ring Out"

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  for the thoughtful bro with electric guitar rock and roll bombast of it, for the intriguing spiritual crisis implied by the lyrics, and for the fact that Justin is now singing with increasingly thunderous, distinctly Duritzian flair.

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  The idea of being close enough to the Sermon on the Mount to inadvertently get drenched in Savior spit, that is quite striking philosophical lyrical imagery from a guy who notably is not going to be singing especially coherent lyrics for very long. Justin Vernon will be pretty much post-language by the time he gets indie rock famous. But until then, I'm quite taken by the phrase, "Like the kitchen rags of God, I am ringing you out."

• 44:27Speaker 00

  Even in these early days, Justin Vernon belts out the line, "Like my voice across the hills," as though his voice were indeed reverberating amidst the Wisconsin hills, as though his voice were its own tempestuous, unpredictable, glorious, ruinous weather system, as though this tornado loved you as well, as though Justin's voice were now a permanent and somehow ancient-feeling part of the fabled, majestic, natural beauty of Eau Claire. Justin Vernon's third solo album, released in 2006, is called "Hazletons." And this record is a much shorter and even harder-to-find and also improbably heavier little dude.

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  This song is called "Song for a Lover of Long Ago." Oh, boy.

• 45:42Speaker 00

  Once again, the pauses between words and his heavy exhale right at the end there are heavier than the already quite heavy words themselves. Once again, Justin Vernon sounds both 20-something and 5,000 years old. Once again, Justin's voice is mutating and fluctuating in real time from a husky cavernous baritone to a frail spectral falsetto. This song, "Song for a Lover of Long Ago," it ends with a drastic drop in audio fidelity and a dramatic increase in physical distance between Justin Vernon and the microphone. Or really, a dramatic increase in physical distance between Justin Vernon and the whole rest of the world. He is singing,

• 46:26Speaker 00

  "I have buried you. Every place I've been, you keep ending up in my shaking hands." I think you can feel that, even if you can't quite hear that.

• 47:05Speaker 00

  As with all great singers and songwriters of any era or microgenre, the farther away Justin Vernon pulls from you, the closer you try to get to him. And eventually, somehow, the two of you meet. These first three solo records, this is not a blockbuster major-label solo career Justin's got going. These are self-released, super rare, please don't get ripped off on eBay affairs, mostly only available as internet bootlegs now, because this dude's about to get famous. Parallel to the solo stuff, though, Justin is also the singer and guitarist in a heartland rock band called De Yarmen Edison. Yes, the band name is Justin's two middle names,

• 47:48Speaker 00

  composed largely of dudes from Justin's old high school ska band. De Yarmen Edison puts out a couple albums of their own, starting with a self-titled album in 2004. Don't get ripped off on eBay trying to find this one either.

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  This song is called "Conquistadors." "My blood has been spilled, henceforth the Catholic guilt," screams Justin Vernon somewhere deep in the background as some primo coldplay via Neil Young pastoral raucousness transpires around him. In 2005, DeArmond Edison put out a second album called Silent Signs, and the band also moves from Eau Claire to Raleigh, North Carolina, a bigger city better suited to an ambitious young rock band, but not too big a city, right? Leaving home is not going to work out so hot for Justin, but I dig this Silent Signs record a lot nonetheless. You know that band Five for Fighting, grizzled but radio-friendly, piano-driven, soft rock?

• 49:07Speaker 00

  "I'm only a bird, I'm only a plane." Well, prepare yourself.

• 49:28Speaker 00

  I told you he sounds like John Andrasik from Five for Fighting. That's a song called "Heroin," heroin with a second E in parentheses. I dig the pedal steel. There's an emphatic sense of place to this band. There's a winsome, ambitious, semi-art-y, country-rock, comfort-food, hometown buddies vibe to DeArmond Edison. But in North Carolina, these fellows flame out. In a New York Times feature in 2011, talking about his increasingly irritated bandmates, Justin says, quote, "I had become too involved in making them happy to be a good songwriter." End quote. Justin's drinking heavily. He's recovering from a romantic breakup, or two.

• 50:12Speaker 00

  He's got liver issues. He's got mononucleosis. Oof, the kissing disease. It's cool and it's funny as long as it doesn't happen to you. Also, Justin loses $220 playing online poker, and that was all his money. And so the band breaks up, and Justin flees North Carolina and heads back home, and he takes up residence alone at his father's tiny hunting cabin on an 80-acre plot of land in the deep, dark woods of northwest Wisconsin. You ever read the book Walden, The Transcendentalist Nature Memoir by Henry David Thoreau, published in 1854?

• 50:54Speaker 00

  Were you ever assigned Walden in English class and you grudgingly skimmed it in an aggrieved, desultory, "get me the hell out of my hometown" type manner? In Walden, Henry David Thoreau writes, quote, "We need the tonic of wildness. At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be indefinitely wild, unsurveilled and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature." End quote. He also says, quote, "I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating.

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  I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude." End quote. That sounds like what you say when nobody wants to be in a rock band with you anymore, but I take your point, Hank. Consider starting a podcast.

• 52:09Speaker 00

  The hornet's nest guitar buzz there after Justin sings the first two lines. The intensifying discordance. Yet again, the spaces between words hit harder than the words themselves. And then something or someone called Bon Iver appears out of nowhere with a 2007 debut album called For Emma, Forever Ago. Once again, here we have a song called "Flume." It is track one. Here in 2007, unless you'd been very intensely following the Wisconsin/North Carolina underground rock scene, "Flume" is extremely likely to be your first exposure to Justin Vernon's

• 52:49Speaker 00

  voice, which is now primarily a frail, spectral falsetto that can bend and distort and replicate itself at will. Or maybe we're beyond free will now, and his voice is just doing whatever it wants with no input from Justin whatsoever. I've decided that the hornet's nest guitar buzz between lines is extremely important here. It is thematically crucial.

• 53:29Speaker 00

  And the crucial theme introduced by that hornet's nest guitar buzz is never turn your back on Mother Earth. Dig, if you will, the For Emma Forever Ago album cover, a stark, white, wintry scene almost but not quite obliterated by the thickening frost on a windowpane. Justin Vernon, appearing in 2025 on the podcast On Being with Krista Tippett, a podcast devoted to spiritual inquiry, science, social healing, and poetry. Justin and Krista discuss the mythical cabin, which is still standing out there in the deep, dark, engulfing Wisconsin woods. Justin says, quote, "Dad's pipes froze this week.

• 54:14Speaker 00

  It was negative 33 or something, but there's something beautiful about it when it gets cold. You don't really think about this, but for it to be that cold, there can't be really any moisture in the air. So it's just blue sky, and the sun is blazing, and it's so cold that it's dangerous to be outside, but there's something so equalizing and beautiful about it." End quote. And Krista, the podcast host, says, "You can tell Mother Nature would kill you." And Justin laughs and says, "Yeah, she will take you out." The most important line in this song, "Flume," and probably the most important line in this whole record, is "lapping lakes like leery loons."

• 54:57Speaker 00

  Not because of what it means, but because it ain't gotta mean anything.

• 55:16Speaker 00

  I'm pretty sure that's what he says there. Lapping lakes like leery loons. It doesn't matter, does it? So it's 2007, and if indeed you're hearing Justin Vernon's voice for the first time, most likely you are introduced to Bon Iver via Pitchfork, the king-making music website that, quite frankly, set the agenda for much of the indie-rock-centric universe for much of the 2000s and beyond. Pitchfork gives this Bon Iver, or Bon Iver record, no pronunciation guide is provided, Pitchfork gives this record an 8.1 in a review written by the great critic and author and country-rock-leaning scholar Stephen M. Duzner.

• 55:57Speaker 00

  And Stephen quotes the "lapping lakes like leery loons" line, and Stephen observes, correctly, that this song, "Flume," is growing less and less lucid. And he says of Justin Vernon, quote, "It's as if he's trying to inhabit the in-between spaces, separating musical expression and private rumination, exposing his regrets without relinquishing them. His emotional exorcism proves even more intense for being so tentative." End quote. This record gets everybody feeling a little poetic. I can certainly relate.

• 57:00Speaker 00

  This song is called Lump Sum, and it takes close to 30 seconds for Justin to sing all that. And it might take 30 years minimum for anybody to definitively decipher it. If you're the sort of person who likes to have songs deciphered. "In my arbor till my ardor trumped every inner inertia." Somebody on songmeanings.com thinks that just means that Justin sat in the forest until he got excited again, and then he left the forest. That's probably what it means. There, we figured it out. So, sad guy with guitar and angelic voice sits in cabin in the woods and writes cryptic breakup songs. This is, let's say,

• 57:43Speaker 00

  an awfully juicy narrative for a suddenly hot, young indie rock sensation. Given subsequent events, namely Bon Iver won the 2012 Grammy for Best New Artist, and Justin Vernon has sung on songs by both Kanye West and Taylor Swift, given subsequent events, it is challenging to recreate the experience of coming to "For Emma Forever Ago" in 2007, totally cold, totally unfamiliar, totally entranced, perhaps, by the narrative, by the voice, by both the exceedingly naturalistic and the phenomenally alien landscape this record evokes. Or maybe

• 58:25Speaker 00

  you just dig the melodies, right? Maybe Bon Iver just hits you on a primal level. I dig this song, "The Wolves, Act One and Two," very, very much. I believe this is Act Two.

• 59:00Speaker 00

  And this requires no elaborate backstory or arduous analysis, right? It's a sad man singing "What Might Have Been Lost" over and over, his acoustic guitar strings squeaking, a gentle harmony developing on the word "lost," plus a second, much higher, squeakier, possibly alien, voice singing "lost" as well. It induces a certain pleasing, alarming hypnosis. "For Emma Forever Ago" is an album defined by isolation, desolation, and an almost self-obliterating spiritual purity. In that 2011 New York Times piece on Bon Iver, written by the great critic and friend of the show, John Karamonica, John writes,

• 59:43Speaker 00

  quote, "In places, 'For Emma' sounds like crying, deep, primal purging." The Wisconsin author Michael Perry, Vernon's friend and a sometime collaborator, says, "For Emma captures the particular mood of the region." And then Michael says, "What it is to be alone in the Wisconsin swamp in late November, the sun is going away, and nature, rather than being a comfort, is instead an implacable force that fills your soul with emptiness." End quote. Justin evidently wrote and recorded this record in three months or so. I hope for his sake, he didn't hang out alone in the cabin for any longer than that.

• 1:00:49Speaker 00

  Here is this song called "For Emma," the second-to-last track on the album, featuring John DeHaven on trumpet and Randy Pingu on trombone. Listening to this album front to back, it is hilarious how soothing those horns are, what a relief this song is, that it's marginally more upbeat, and Justin's got a couple buddies checking in on him. Justin's gonna be okay, ultimately, even if he is singing a chorus that starts off, "With all your lies, you're still very lovable." The Emma part of the Bon Iver narrative, who Emma is precisely, or how many people are Emma, the sad, angry breakup piece of

• 1:01:30Speaker 00

  the puzzle here is, let's say, the most conventional and the least important part in the long run. Don't get me wrong, I listen to sad, angry breakup songs all the time, but I do think the "I miss my lying girlfriend" lyrical content is awfully familiar terrain amidst all the delightfully unfamiliar, physical and metaphysical terrain Bon Iver is covering here. This may explain why "Skinny Love" is my least favorite song on this record, while it is, at least streaming-wise, the most popular, non-Taylor Swift-affiliated Bon Iver song.

• 1:02:23Speaker 00

  I get it. I get the tremendous appeal, the charismatic, wounded grievance of "my, my, my, my, my, my, my." Talking to Pitchfork in 2011, Justin Vernon talks briefly about the specific lady Skinny Love is about, kinda, sorta, but he says, quote, "To say that Skinny Love is about Christy would not be entirely accurate. We dated, and she's an incredibly important person that I lived with for a long time, but it's about that time in a relationship that I was going through. You're in a relationship because you need help, but that's not necessarily why you should be in a relationship. And that's skinny.

• 1:03:04Speaker 00

  It doesn't have weight. Skinny Love doesn't have a chance because it's not nourished." End quote. That'd be Christy Smith, who sings backup and plays very light drums on that song "Flume," the Leary Loons' song. Relationships are complicated. Skinny Love, by contrast, is very effectively less complicated and a great deal blunter. "I tell my love to wreck it all, cut out all the ropes, and let me fall." And don't forget, "my, my, my, my, my, my, my."

• 1:03:56Speaker 00

  It is a genuinely, singularly arresting falsetto. Whether you come to this song with a great deal of prior Justin Vernon experience, or more likely, little to no prior Justin Vernon experience at all, I guess what I hold against Skinny Love is that it's a delicate balance, this whole album, between familiarity and unfamiliarity, with lyrics that span from the almost but not-quite lucid to the gently, patently absurd. And Skinny Love is the one moment on "For Emma Forever Ago" where I just go, "Oh, okay, I get it. He's pissed."

• 1:04:47Speaker 00

  And he's not singing "I Told You Anymore," but it's the thunderbolt-striking-a-redwood-tree viciousness of "And now all your love is wasted," and then "Who the hell was I?" I feel like I understand Justin Vernon's deal in this exact moment. When Justin Vernon's whole appeal for me, his escalating appeal, because if you want the truth, "For Emma" is my least favorite of the five Bon Iver albums, this dude's whole appeal to me is that he is a semi-familiar but fundamentally baffling outline, a silhouette of a now voluminously bearded, romantic gunslinger troubadour, but I can't quite fill in that silhouette.

• 1:05:29Speaker 00

  Ideally, I got no idea what this guy's saying, is what I'm saying.

• 1:05:49Speaker 00

  I'm pretty sure he sang the word "excavation" there, but I couldn't swear to any of the rest of it. My favorite song on my least favorite Bon Iver record is called "Restacks," R-E colon space stacks, like an email reply, maybe. It doesn't matter. It's the gorgeous resignation of the melody there. I think of Justin Vernon the way Nico Case thinks of Bjork. I think of Bon Iver lyrics as though English is Justin's second or third language. Or maybe Justin doesn't speak this language at all. The only language "For Emma Forever Ago" fluently speaks is the language of total solitude.

• 1:06:45Speaker 00

  He just sang "When You're Drunk as Hell." I figured that part out. Within a couple years, this guy is gonna be hanging out with Kanye West, and about a decade after that, this guy's gonna be singing with Taylor Swift. But I decided playing Kanye or Taylor songs in this context would qualify as jump scares. We need a healthy distance, or really an unhealthy distance, from the outside world. I don't blame anybody for rolling their eyes at the Bon Iver creation myth. The cabin, the quasi-thorough isolation, the heartbroken lumberjack breakup album vibes, it's a lot. It's a familiar pop music silhouette.

• 1:07:28Speaker 00

  This dude drove up to his father's hunting cabin for a few months, and he chopped some wood, and he watched some DVDs, and he wrote some songs. It's not that deep on paper, necessarily, but any skepticism I have about the backstory evaporates when I hear the voice of the deep, dark, engulfing forest itself.

• 1:08:04Speaker 00

  On your back with the racks as the stacks as your load is what Justin Vernon just sang. Maybe allegedly, sure, but I get the message and the message as always is what will make you believe me?

• 1:08:25Speaker 00

  We are so honored to be joined once again by John Karamonika, pop music critic at the New York Times and co-host of the essential New York Times PopCast, the best podcast about music and snacks ever created. John, it is wonderful to talk to you. That's it's true. That's absolutely true.

• 1:08:43Speaker 07

  Nothing I love more than a direct red phone to Ohio.

• 1:08:47Speaker 00

  That's right.

• 1:08:48Speaker 07

  That's just, I should have it on my desk. Just pull it up and get you on the line. Yep.

• 1:08:54Speaker 00

  For our, for our video, for our viewers, I have to say, I am once again, very concerned about your setup. You are surround, you have a giant bookshelf full of books and CDs behind you. And I would just, please do not make any sudden movements unless you get caught in the head.

• 1:09:09Speaker 07

  I did want to do this. I did want to do this on the podcast app, but I decided to work from home today. And this is, you know, this is, this is my drama and also my girlfriend's drama.

• 1:09:21Speaker 00

  You're sharing it. It's funny how that works. Yeah. It's true. John, what was it initially about Bon Iver, about the For Emma Forever Ago album? That made it like a huge sensation like in 2007, like we had a lot of sad indie rock type people at that time. Like, was it the album? Was it the songs with this? Was it this guy's voice? Was it the narrative? Like what captivated people about this dude?

• 1:09:47Speaker 07

  So I think it's important to remember that the For Emma arc was quite long.

• 1:09:57Speaker 07

  Pitchfork reviewed it incredibly early and very enthusiastically. By the time he got to New York to play the Bowery Ballroom, which is where I first saw him. I think a long time had passed, certainly months had passed. I have a cynical answer and a non cynical answer to the question. I'll start with the cynical answer, which is, and, and, and for those of, for those listeners or viewers who have been proximate to my geese discourse, you'll forgive me for recycling this.

• 1:10:33Speaker 00

  Please.

• 1:10:33Speaker 07

  But sometimes, uh, bros need a band. Like sometimes bros just need a band.

• 1:10:40Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:10:41Speaker 07

  Sometimes.

• 1:10:42Speaker 00

  And this is the cynical, this is the cynical one?

• 1:10:45Speaker 07

  This is the cynical take. Okay. Okay. All right. This is the cynical take. Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes bros need a band. And, um, I agree that the, the sort of pool was pretty deep at the time in the mid, mid 2000s, late 2000s. Plenty of indie rock, no shortage of fifth albums of so and so on Merge Records. You know, like, like no shortage of that. This album came out, you know, on Jag Jaguar. A lot of good stuff on that label, but I do think that the mythology and the particulars of the sound allowed it to crack through. The cynical thing is the intensity with which it cracked through.

• 1:11:30Speaker 07

  It solved some problem that I think this, the scale of the problem pre-existed before the solution to the problem did. Like the lock was there. Someone just had to come along with the key. I don't know if it was 100% pegged to the key. And actually, as I was listening to this album again, in preparation for this, I did have a little bit of head scratching where I was like, I don't totally know why this was the thing that was shaped in the way. Now, of course, the non cynical answer is this is a man with a beautiful voice,

• 1:12:10Speaker 07

  ready access to his emotions, built in sense of mythos.

• 1:12:18Speaker 07

  And also this real tug of war between strong songcraft impulses and a real artistic tendency towards chaos.

• 1:12:31Speaker 00

  Yes. Right.

• 1:12:33Speaker 07

  The, the tug of war between those two, I mean, particularly on this album, the, the dynamic changes on later albums, but on this album, you still feel that he's not quite sure which direction he's meant to go. So that's the, the non cynical answer is there are many excellent things about this album. And it is an interesting transition album between structure and chaos. The, the cynical answer is, uh, bros were parched.

• 1:13:04Speaker 00

  Bros. Well, somebody think of the bros. Bros were very sad. Bros had been ignored in pop culture.

• 1:13:12Speaker 07

  Rob, before I got in the game, that's all anybody thought about.

• 1:13:15Speaker 00

  That's, yeah, that's true. It was very bro heavy and you are responsible for breaking through the bro quagmire. And we salute you. We do what we can. Yes. The structure and chaos thing is interesting because something that I've read about a lot of different bands is like, they have strong pop instincts, but they sabotage them. Maybe some consciously, maybe on purpose. Like they could make straightforward, you know, mainstream pop music, but they choose not to. Did you get that vibe from Bon Iver immediately?

• 1:13:47Speaker 07

  It's actually, I think it's the opposite. I think it's that he has strong weird instincts. And yet still felt like he had to, still felt like he could or should make things that are slightly more legible. You know? And I think that's borne out on later projects. And certainly when you start experiencing Bon Iver as a live proposition, I think it's borne out that the unruliness of Bon Iver is its true strength. And that it's, uh, his, that Justin Vernon's facility with songcraft is, it's a step towards where he wants to go, but it might even be like weirdly a speed bump of some kind

• 1:14:30Speaker 07

  that he kind of has to get over, uh, to get to the promised land.

• 1:14:35Speaker 00

  What did you remember, if anything, about that first, uh, Bowery Ballroom show? When you first saw him, there's plenty of like indie rock sensations who don't cut it live, right? Like they're just, the lights are too bright or whatever. Like, how did he seem to you on stage?

• 1:14:49Speaker 07

  Yeah. My guy was just hunched up in a corner. He, he looked, he looked like, he looked like he was like the third keyboard player in the band, you know? Like he was just like, like, we're going to show some video. Like this is the stage, right? This, we're in the stage. He was like,

• 1:15:08Speaker 00

  little off center, you know, at the margins, you know, just, just in the periphery. There we go. Yeah.

• 1:15:14Speaker 07

  Just a man surrounded, yeah, man surrounded by his pedals and, and his keyboards and, and. I don't want to say he didn't want to be there. That's like, obviously you can't really pretend to know, but there was no, um,

• 1:15:32Speaker 07

  there was no hero impulse in him.

• 1:15:35Speaker 00

  Okay. That's interesting.

• 1:15:36Speaker 07

  And that is something that I think even in our most like beloved indie rock bands, which are in theory not built for hero worship, plenty of those guys have a hero impulse. But Justin Vernon did not have a hero impulse. And I, I remember being incredibly struck by that because the voice is so powerful. And the, um,

• 1:16:07Speaker 07

  specific non specificity of the lyrics, like the, the, the tone, the sentiment. He, he said to me, we'll, we'll get to when I interviewed him later, but like, he said to me when I interviewed him, like Bon Iver is a sentiment. You know, the sentiment is so clear of what he was doing, but the presentation was not, it wasn't a sales pitch. You know what I mean? Like it was not, he wasn't advertising Bon Iver, the, the, you know, like flashing letters. Like he wasn't advertising it. He wasn't quite reluctant, but it wasn't, it was not bold. It was retired, you know, it was reticent.

• 1:16:48Speaker 00

  Yeah. Sure. Sure. Yeah. I mean, that's the vibe I get from the whole For Emma album, with maybe the exception of Skinny Love. Like I understand why this is the song that popped just because it's the most direct and angry. And it's like, oh, this is a mad guy yelling at his ex, right? Like, but I, from here, I like every subsequent Bon Iver record more because they get weirder and more cryptic. And they get less discernible. Like did Skinny Love specifically, either on record or live, do anything for you particularly?

• 1:17:21Speaker 07

  Yeah. It's funny. I, I, I really haven't listened to this album. I mean, I listened to it to prep for, to interview Justin last year, but prior to that, I probably hadn't listened to it for a really long time. And I was surprised in going through it, how much more I liked other songs.

• 1:17:37Speaker 00

  On the record, um, dare I say skinny love is a precursor to stomp clap. That's coming just around the corner.

• 1:17:48Speaker 00

  Like, I, I don't think I thought of it that way in the moment, or really in any moment since, but. You know, you listen to it and you're just like, you know, that, that bro from the Lumineers was like.

• 1:18:00Speaker 07

  Yeah, that's right. Like snapping his suspenders.

• 1:18:03Speaker 00

  That with drugs, like that with drugs, like, let's do that, you know?

• 1:18:07Speaker 07

  There we go, yeah.

• 1:18:10Speaker 00

  So, but like, you know, even the Wolves, which follows it on the album. Yeah, is so much more majestic and so much stranger and so much more curious and. And also I find like, um.

• 1:18:28Speaker 00

  Skinny love is very legible, but songs like the Wolves and other songs on this record are, are just.

• 1:18:36Speaker 00

  Their, their whole universes and, and I think the closest thing to skinny love on this record, which is the opener, which is Flume. Is I think a better version of the thing that skinny love is, which is in terms of legibility and. Uh, crispness, uh, it feels much firmer to me. Skinny love, I, I. I guess it's the ones for people who were confused by the other songs, maybe. I, I don't know.

• 1:19:02Speaker 07

  I think that's right. Yeah. I, I'm interested in the tension between the not having a hero impulse, but the mythos, right? Because I find it challenging to separate this record from like the sad guy in a cabin. In remote Wisconsin, right? Like, I think the reason, part of the reason this record popped was that narrative. Like, did you find the narrative to be especially extra noisy with this person? And like, that was what propelled him in front of people in the first place.

• 1:19:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, it's important to remember, what, what year did this come out? Like, oh.

• 1:19:36Speaker 07

  Oh, seven and oh, eight, it sort of bleeds into it.

• 1:19:39Speaker 00

  Right, the reissue is oh, eight and yeah. Right, exactly. Yes, the reissue is oh, eight and the, the original release, which is what Pitchfork reviews a seven, um. You have to remember, in two thousand and seven, nineteen years ago, there were only three sources of information. In the, on the entire planet, and you just very simply had to believe what they said. Uh, and if, if one of those things said that this man was in a cabin for four months, you had no way to have any alternate information. Or to even feel differently about that one piece of information. Um, it was a totalizing narrative. It was a monoculture. Thing happened today, yeah. If the same thing happened today, it'd be like a tweet, it'd be like.

• 1:20:24Speaker 00

  An Instagram comment with fourteen replies and thirty seven likes, uh, and then people would move on. But at that point, again, people aggregate around mythology. Um, and it was a very easy mythology to aggregate against, uh, to aggregate around, although. When I eventually did speak with him, like, the romance is not exactly what was happening. When he was in the cabin, like, people had this kind of romantic idea that he was in the cabin and just, you know. The sky opened up and the songs like came down into his head and, and just, he went.

• 1:21:07Speaker 00

  And, and you know, the magic stuff came out, that's right, but that's not what happened. He was like, no, I like chopped a bunch of wood. Watched DVDs and drank a whole lot. And then, you know, at some point, songs started coming. Again, it's a mono, it's, it's, I don't want to say it's the last of a monoculture mythos, but it is, it does remind me of an era. Where like one fact or detail, true or apocryphal, could shape a rollout.

• 1:21:35Speaker 07

  Totally, totally. And as you say, you have a beautiful voice, John.

• 1:21:40Speaker 00

  Thank you, thank you.

• 1:21:41Speaker 07

  I practiced that because I knew I'd have to do it. Every social media clip of this interview will just be that with me just listening, yeah, it's, it's.

• 1:21:50Speaker 00

  Dog, I make a video podcast, I'm helping.

• 1:21:54Speaker 07

  That's why you're the best.

• 1:21:56Speaker 00

  You need, I know.

• 1:21:57Speaker 07

  I know you know, um, okay. As you say, you interviewed him, I think in twenty eleven, right before the second record, before Bon Iver.

• 1:22:05Speaker 00

  In the lead up.

• 1:22:06Speaker 07

  What did you? In Wisconsin, I believe, and like, what did you, what did you make of him? Oh, Claire, what did you make of him as a person? Did he seem like just a normal Wisconsin bro at that point, or was he now a young hip rock star? Who is starting to develop some sort of hero mentality?

• 1:22:24Speaker 00

  No, I mean, I, I think then, and probably still now, uh, based on my experience last year. You know, he gives off the, the air of kind of being like the most confident guy in your hometown, which is not to say. He's the most confident guy on the planet, or that, that his confidence translates into other settings. Although I do think he is fundamentally a competent person, but he did not. His aspirations were incredibly circumscribed, you know? It's like he'd moved downtown, which, you know, downtown Eau Claire, I mean, sorry, you know, forgive me as a New Yorker. But like downtown Eau Claire, you know?

• 1:23:07Speaker 00

  Like, cool apartment, like overlook the river, you know?

• 1:23:09Speaker 07

  Sure.

• 1:23:10Speaker 00

  Cool, but like, we're not talking, he didn't move to Milwaukee.

• 1:23:14Speaker 07

  Not enough fat burgers for your liking.

• 1:23:16Speaker 00

  He didn't move to, no, no, no fat burger within, within spinning distance, um, you know, he didn't move to Madison. Like, he didn't move to like a bigger place in Wisconsin, right? Or, or Chicago or Minneapolis, you know? Like, um, I found him to be.

• 1:23:35Speaker 00

  Quiet but certain.

• 1:23:37Speaker 07

  Hmm.

• 1:23:38Speaker 00

  And, and I think doing his best to make sure that all the things that had happened. In the, you know, twenty four months leading up to that second album. Didn't derail him from being fundamentally the person that he was when he made the. Preferably without the alcohol stuff, which, you know, he was wrestling with during that time. Um, yeah, I didn't.

• 1:24:07Speaker 00

  It's like he always wanted to get back to Eau Claire. It's like, you could just say, he's just like, wanted to get back to Eau Claire. Like, he was just, that's where the ground was steady and he wanted to stand there much more than go other places.

• 1:24:20Speaker 07

  I wonder how much of the appeal of him, you know, this whole time has been that grounding in Eau Claire. Like, we talk all the time about, from the two thousands on, like, music is just on the internet, right? Like, we've lost the idea of a regional scene, like a city, like a place. And what people were drawn to, you know, starting with the cabin, but just Eau Claire as a whole, like, this is a dude. Who is in like a physical place, who is in his hometown, who represents somewhere, you know? And you can feel that in the music, you know, there's a rich quality to the music that like internet music doesn't have, you know what I mean?

• 1:24:57Speaker 00

  Well, well, I want to push back on that, actually. Because I do think, like, the, look, there's an obvious ruralness to some of what's happening here. I made the stomp clap joke earlier, like.

• 1:25:11Speaker 07

  Not a joke.

• 1:25:11Speaker 00

  It's, um.

• 1:25:16Speaker 00

  But I actually think what was happening on the internet at this time is really worth addressing, which is. In the mid to late two thousands, you obviously have Kanye experimenting with vocal tones. You have Drake, uh, arriving, blending, rapping and singing and, and deploying technology. Uh, you're, you're sort of in the, still in the hazy afterglow of T-Pain and, and the autotune wave. And right around the corner, the weekend is coming, you know, a couple of years later.

• 1:25:55Speaker 00

  With this kind of like space voice, um, I think that Justin Vernon was actually at the beginning. Of what I would describe as internet voice, like he was early on that. And as he was manipulating his vocal tone, like he found kinship in hip hop. Long before anybody in other genres were really like heavily playing with that. But the fact that, you know, Kanye identified something in him pretty quickly, um, to me. It, it felt like he was one of the people who made it safe to have a vocal presentation.

• 1:26:37Speaker 00

  That actually was post-physical, especially in the later weirder stuff. Um, there is something, uh, like not geographic about it. Like, I, I, I think the myth is geographic, but the tone, the vocal tone is not ge, it's post-geographic to me. And, and, um, I think he made it safe for other people to experiment like that.

• 1:27:05Speaker 07

  Yeah, I remember it being such a cataclysmic, you know, crossover moment, like you go from For Emma. To, I, I think it was The Woods, right? That's the song, that's the first Bon Iver song, the EP with the autotune. And then he's with Kanye, then he's on My Dark Beautiful Twisted Fantasy, which is the biggest record that's ever come out. Like, and now he's a part of the Kanye Extended Universe, like for years, like, what do you think? You know, what drew Kanye to Bon Iver? Is it a Drake thing of just going to what's hot? Or does Kanye hear, see, feel something very specific from Bon Iver, you know? Is it that internet voice? Like, what is it about Bon Iver?

• 1:27:47Speaker 00

  I think that's my gut, my gut, just based on my understanding of Kanye is Kanye is the type of person who hears a thing or sees a thing. And is like, get that person on the phone, or like, get that person on a plane, and in this case, you know, for the Hawaii sessions, um, for fantasy.

• 1:28:04Speaker 00

  I imagine Kanye heard Bon Iver and heard something. Spectral and ghostly in that voice and understood that that was a direction that he would, he himself was heading in. And he, he himself wouldn't quite get there for a little while, but I think he himself was heading in that direction. And Kanye's instinct is very much like.

• 1:28:30Speaker 00

  Give me that. And it's, and it's interesting, like, I hadn't totally made this connection at the time. But when I did the reporting for that story, like, one of the things about Bon Iver's second album, which is recorded at April Base, which is the studio that he built, like, not far from where he lives, in Wisconsin, he sort of made his own boot camp. Like, he flew people in. It's like, obviously, it's not so remarkable to, like, fly in a guitar player. But it's like, you know, it's like, you spend some time around Kanye, and Kanye's whole thing is like, I bring everybody to me, and then I'm the maestro. You know, it's like, my instruments are other people. And I wonder, I do wonder on some level if that rubbed off on Justin when he was recording the

• 1:29:12Speaker 00

  second album, where he was like, I'm just gonna bring a bunch of people to rural Wisconsin, and just see what comes out, and then I'll play with the pieces. But I think, I think that,

• 1:29:24Speaker 00

  you know, Kanye, anytime I've talked to him, has really emphasized how much, how much he loves hooks. Like, he's not a, he's not a weird, he doesn't like weird music, you know? So it's like, I don't think he was drawn to Bon Iver's eccentricity, or like, sort of like loose avant structures. Like, I don't think it was that. I think it was that Bon Iver unlocked a sentiment in the vocal that Kanye said, yes, that is close to where I'm going. Let me pull it here, and see what I can do with it.

• 1:29:58Speaker 07

  Yeah. And then it's hard not to draw a connection directly to Taylor, right? Like, Justin shows up on Folklore in 2020, and from the beginning, Taylor Swift's mythical indie record that's much cooler than mine, I just thought of Bon Iver. Like, immediately. I don't know if that's canon, but like, this, this seems like a huge cataclysmic crossover moment, you know, where the streams finally connect between pop and indie rock, like, completely. Like, what made Bon Iver the right voice, and the right name for Taylor Swift on that song at that exact moment?

• 1:30:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, you know, it's like, Taylor's collaborated with other quote-unquote indie artists in other contexts, and they always feel, I don't know if force is the right word, but they feel,

• 1:30:48Speaker 00

  it's clear that Taylor is the center of rabid, and these people are just like, lucky, lucky to be there, you know? It's like, lucky, they, it's good for them for answering the call that day, because it could have been somebody else, you know? But you don't feel that way with, with Bon Iver. And I will say, like, I don't know if Taylor Swift had called Justin Vernon in 2014, if he would have answered. I don't know. I'm not sure. I think he had a bit of an evolution in terms of his comfort levels with trying things outside of his immediate scope of experience. He had a comfort level. I imagine, you know, the pandemic, yeah, things, you know, right, everything was wacky, you know, it's like, why not? Like,

• 1:31:33Speaker 00

  let's go on a Taylor record. Bon Iver is an act that connotes, or that imputes credibility, in a way that very few acts from the 2010 do, kind of without, without having to say much more. It's like, the closest I can think of, in terms of someone she could have collaborated with, would be like Frank Ocean, of someone who, I think,

• 1:31:59Speaker 00

  people understand that that person does not do things that they wish to not do.

• 1:32:03Speaker 07

  That's right.

• 1:32:04Speaker 00

  Which means that the choice of him to do this must inherently validate Taylor. Like, whether or not you like the song, his choice to show up and do the song is a validation of Taylor. And I think that there are many artists from the 2000s, quote-unquote indie scene, or any of these, like, roots or Americana adjacent scenes, that if she had collaborated with, you'd just be like, ah, that's just some dipshit on a song. But with, but with Justin Vernon, you're like, damn, do I have to take this seriously? Now, obviously, as a person that always takes Taylor Swift seriously, I am not afflicted by that. But many, but many people are, including some of our friends.

• 1:32:45Speaker 07

  Couldn't be you. Yes.

• 1:32:47Speaker 00

  Couldn't be me. Couldn't be me.

• 1:32:49Speaker 07

  Okay, just to wrap up, as you say, you interviewed Justin last year, you know, for this Sable Fable rollout, and I remember, sort of, the framing was like, he's happier now, and he's a little sexier now. Like, your sense of both him as a person, you know, from, you know, 2011, or wherever you first hang out with him, and also the way it affected his music, like, what's your sense of his final evolution thus far? Like, both as a, like, a pop star, sort of, and just as a musician?

• 1:33:18Speaker 00

  Well, I want to add one more detail about the prior interview, which is to talk about his modesty and his sense of scale of the world. So I asked him at the time if he thought he would win a Grammy, which seemed pretty obvious to me, if you think about how, you know, Arcade Fire just won, and so, you know, indie music, indie music was finally getting a hearing at the Grammys, like, thank God. Yeah. How did we ever survive? Yeah. How do we ever survive 30 years of indie music getting overlooked at the Grammys?

• 1:33:59Speaker 00

  You know, and so I asked him, and he was very much like, that's ridiculous, like, that'll never happen. Like, there's just no, I don't see a path. And I was like, well, I clearly see a path. And then eventually, he did, of course, win Grammys. And, and I, I remembered this because I did not put any of this in my original article, which came out before the album came out. But I had to, I remember I had to fight with the editor, because I had it in transcript. And then when he won, I was like, or no, when he was nominated, maybe, because I think it came out in December, like, when he was nominated, I was like, we have to run this. And the editor was like, oh, you're, you're making him seem like, you're sort of like poking at him. And I was like, no, I was like, I think it's actually quite revealing that.

• 1:34:43Speaker 07

  It's sincere. Yeah.

• 1:34:44Speaker 00

  It's sincere. He means this, and actually does not seem to have a sense of how the entire macro system is working. Because like, myself, I could see the macro system was working in a way that could end up with his album Pachinko-ing its way to the Grammys, which it did. But he did not see that, and he could not see that, or chose not to see that, you know, some combination of those things. That guy, that's not the exact same guy who I interviewed last year. I think he understands. I think he, he sees the big picture, but he's still a bit of a refusing it.

• 1:35:25Speaker 00

  And I actually think, you know, because he moves part, or sometimes to Los Angeles, and people often move to Los Angeles to make it big, I think he moved to Los Angeles to hide. I think he moved to Los An, I mean, obviously, you could probably hide better in, like, I don't know, Tulsa or something. But, yeah, there's plenty of those. But I think the idea that

• 1:35:50Speaker 00

  there's like, a bit of a burden being,

• 1:35:57Speaker 00

  you know, he talked about financial responsibility for all his bandmates, and when he, like, disbanded before the pandemic, you know, it's like, and the thing that he said in the interview that really stuck with me is, like, I felt like I had a boot on my chest for, like, 10 years straight, and now I don't. And I think he is trying to recreate the cabin metaphorically, but just in the center of this very big diffuse city. But the guy is still the same. And, and, but I, but it's like, still the most competent guy you know from your high school, but not someone who's gonna, not someone who's gonna, like, lord it over you.

• 1:36:36Speaker 07

  Yes. John, this has been wonderful. The best singing we've ever had on this show, hands down.

• 1:36:44Speaker 00

  I hope I make all the highlights.

• 1:36:48Speaker 07

  Thank you so much for being here, dude.

• 1:36:50Speaker 00

  Of course.

• 1:36:53Speaker 07

  Thanks very much to our guest this week, John Caramanica. Thanks to our producers, Juliana Ress, Olivia Creery, Chris Sutton, and Justin Sales. Animations and graphics by Chris Callaton. Special thanks to Cole Kutchner, and thanks to you for listening. And now, let's all go listen to Skinny Love by Bon Iver. We'll see you next week.

• 1:37:27Speaker 01

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