Bon Iver Is Out of the Woods

Justin Vernon was weeping onstage, his signature falsetto warbling just out of control, when he realized it was time to rethink Bon Iver. The song he was performing that day in Duluth, Minnesota, in 2023 — “715 – CRΣΣKS” from 2016’s 22, a Million — is an agonizing vocal-loop routine that asks a lot of the artist. “I have to go way outside my body in order to do the song justice,” he said on Reddit in an “Ask Me Anything” session, “so sometimes that sort of experience can be very enjoyable, and other times it can be somewhat painful!” The song is beloved enough in the fandom to have spawned a YouTube playlist populated exclusively with live renditions of it. The Duluth performance sticks out as a moment where attendees roared while the performer ached. But this is actually the heart of their relationship. One does not turn on Bon Iver to throw ass. To listen to Justin Vernon is to hurt and heal alongside him — an approach he has found taxing.

The storm of activity heralding the new Bon Iver full-length Sable, Fable — including a gravlax pizza, a basketball tournament, and a light and chipper TV and podcast push — loudly insinuates that Vernon is deeply committed to having a better time now. He has since worked on his anxiety, moved to California, and quit cigs and Twitter. He returns to uncouple the day job from the memories of difficult experiences, to write from a place of peace rather than distress. The acoustic Sable EP from last year now feels like a delicate pump fake, and the older, quieter songs sit at the top of the new album like a tumultuous past from which Fable represents a poignant break. After callbacks to the grief and solitude of the early catalogue in the darkly resolute “Speyside,” it’s off to greener pastures for good. In many ways, Fable is your stereotypical “living in Los Angeles now” record, drawing on new personnel, celebrating light and heat, and aiming to stimulate bodies as much as brains.

The trilling piano, blinding sunlight, and Kacy Hill harmonies of “Short Story” showcase Sable, Fable’s agenda of prying the hurt off the Bon Iver ethos. A writer every bit as in tune with his surroundings as with his feelings, Vernon has often made music that references (and even sounds like) the cabins, woods, and tributaries of rivers and lakes you’d survey in a trip through his hometown of Eau Claire, Wisconsin. Fable is a catalogue of his exodus. Its frosty seclusion dissolves along the westerly trek; its solemn folk rubs elbows with R&B and church music as sensuality and spirituality sweep in to replace the wintry regrets of “Things Behind Things Behind Things” and the yearning introspection of “Awards Season.” The rootsy boom-bap of “Walk Home” imagines a D’Angelo with a flair for pedal steel; country and hip-hop sensibilities meshing easily in the hands of an artist who has guested on Travis Scott and Taylor Swift songs. “Day One” pulls gospel pianist Cory Henry, bass wiz Mononeon, multi-instrumentalist DIJON, and indie-pop artist Flock of Dimes for a vibrant fusion of hip-hop, rock, and choral music blending screaming guitar and soulful vocal chops. The handful of cuts with Henry and Mononeon — who aid the boisterously funky “I’ll Be There” — make good on the lightness initiative by coaxing the soul singer out of Vernon, who led the album with the folkie yowl of old. Fable is luxuriating in contrasts between the pained, private, and pop-adjacent Bon Iver. He repurposes the tools of past sad songs for brighter goals. Treading shockingly close to latter-day Justin Timberlake and Timbaland on “I’ll Be There” and to A Momentary Lapse of Reason–era Pink Floyd between beat-oriented fare, Fable says Vernon’s folk and pop tastes are capable of cozy cohabitation. His cryptic lyrical missives can paint scenes of romantic intimacy with the same zest they once showered on wild wolves and herons.

Occasionally the shift in tone feels a bit like Sting’s “Brand New Day,” the artist’s 1999 single using ecstatic Black church aesthetics to signal his rebirth — though Fable spotlights Black creatives and touts tighter vocals than other curios at that musical intersection. Elsewhere, fans who saw 2011’s synth-folk gem “Beth/Rest” as a cash grab will likely resent “From” with guitar virtuoso and schlock merchant Jacob Collier. Collier’s vocals and mk.gee’s guitar playing nudge Vernon into a studious pastiche of a 40-something rocker outing of the ’80s like George Harrison’s Cloud Nine. “If Only I Could Wait” with Danielle Haim is a blissed-out ballad that, like Bruce Springsteen’s “Streets of Philadelphia” or Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush’s “Don’t Give Up,” resembles mere gooey radio fodder until you catch the cosmic questions the lyrics are pondering: “Can I live inside this state? / Where the summers are charades now / Can I incur the weight?” The onset of a deep romantic bond proves as terrifying here as the apparent loss of love chronicled in past weepers. Vernon’s pen remains compelling as long as it isn’t aggressively dressing this slippery talent in the threads of the AOR vets that his killer cover of Bonnie Raitt’s “I Can’t Make You Love Me” suggests he worships. Fable’s easygoing highlights and sporadically overbaked bits all show Vernon working toward a sustainable maturity, marrying a dripping earnestness and a musical playfulness. He finally doesn’t have to injure himself to push himself. The challenge, if he gets to playing this stuff outside, won’t be reliving bygone misfortune but bringing the same gutsy melisma captured in the recording of “I’ll Be There” to the stage night after night.