When Justin Vernon first released the first three songs of ‘SABLE, fABLE’ late last year, initially as a standalone EP, it was striking how much it resembled the Wisconsin singer-songwriter’s earliest music as Bon Iver. Doing away with much of the stuttering, experimental art-folk and mysterious numerological codes that defined later albums, the devastatingly sad trio of songs stripped things all the way back to the loneliness and isolation that ran through his 2008 breakthrough debut, ‘For Emma, Forever Ago’.
In fairly meta fashion, emulating the same sparse folk sound that made him famous, Vernon sounds exhausted and on the verge of giving up during this album’s opening three songs; jaded by the smarmy, transactional aspects of celebrity, and creatively bored and disillusioned. “I can’t go through the motions, how’m I supposed to do this?” he despairs on ‘Things Behind Things Behind Things’.
As a separate piece of work, ‘SABLE’ felt like a strangely timed retreat, but within the wider context of ‘SABLE, fABLE’ it takes on a rather different meaning. It serves as a caricature of Bon Iver’s ‘sad man in a log cabin’ schtick before moving towards brighter, more light-hearted climes.
That’s not the only thing that has changed; the ‘fABLE’ portion of Bon Iver’s first record in six years bursts with sun-soaked funk, Vernon flexing a sultry falsetto and singing about lust, desire and creative rejuvenation with some of his least-adorned lyrics to date. “Pull me close up to your face, honey, I just want the taste,” he sings on ‘Walk Home’, a markedly optimistic, skew-whiff take on Marvin Gaye-styled R&B. From the beachy, Danielle Haim-featuring duet ‘If Only I Could Wait’ to the warm guitars Mk.gee contributes to ‘From’, there is a feeling of creative looseness and liberation.
Some of this is possibly informed by some of Bon Iver’s more mainstream projects in recent years. In 2020, Vernon dueted with Taylor Swift on two ‘Folklore’ tracks, before joining in with ‘Brat’ summer last year. Bon Iver’s version of ‘I think about it all the time’ being the most emotionally affecting moment of the ‘Brat’ remix album was not on many people’s bingo sheets, and yet Vernon weirdly seemed the perfect fit for a song which is, at its heart, about the realisation that every path chosen comes with a kind of grief for the infinite others left behind.
Though this is not Bon Iver’s answer to ‘Brat’ summer by any stretch of the imagination, many of these same existential questions also linger on ‘SABLE, fABLE’ – a record that grapples with his own identity as much as it does the twists and turns of life. Though some fans feared this might well be an epilogue to the Bon Iver project, it comes across as more of a rebirth.
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Details
- Record label: Jagjaguwar
- Release date: April 11, 2025