Deaglan
New Member
Phenomenal American folk singer BON IVER announces his only Irish show of 2009 at the Big Top, Galway this summer.
Having sold out both Tripod and National Stadium in Dublin last autumn, the sublime Bon Iver (aka Justin Vernon) plays his biggest Irish show yet as part of the run of shows at the Big Top as part of Galway Arts Festival.
The unique setting of Galway City is of peculiar personal significance to an extraordinary talent, who returns to the city for the first time since a visit in 1999, when Galway was the only place outside North America Vernon had ever spent significant time in. It remained the only foreign city he’d lived in up ‘til the time of his debut European show in May 2008.
Employed his first-visit-around selling phones in an Eircell shop on Eyre Square, Vernon returns to his former youthful haunts for the first time as one of the greatest international musical acts to emerge in recent years.
Bon Iver’s stunning breakthrough debut For Emma, Forever Ago is universally acknowledged as being among the very top albums to be released last year, making every significant list of best albums of 2008. His latest breathtaking EP Bloodbank was released in January.
**Tickets on sale 9am next Tuesday May 12th**
POD Concerts & Galway Arts Festival present
BON IVER
& special guest
Thursday July 23rd
The Big Top – Fisheries Field – Galway.
Doors – 7pm
Tickets €35.50 available from Ticketmaster and usual outlets www.ticketmaster.ie
www.boniver.org
www.myspace.com/boniver
Every album is a product of time and place, but this one more than most. Bon Iver (an intentional mis-spelling / adaptation of ‘Bon Hiver’, French for ‘Good Winter’) is the work of Justin Vernon, who spent three months alone in a log cabin in Northeast Wisconsin, living off the land, splitting wood, and hunting for food - a voluntary exile. And although this wasn’t the archetypal spell in the wilderness that many artists seek out, a deliberate scheme to create a “masterpiece”, some very special music was born out of the experience. For Emma, Forever Ago is the unexpected, triumphant result.
Vernon, a former member of Wisconsin quartet DeYarmond Edison, moved into the cabin after the break-up of his former outfit in 2006. He took with him very little of the equipment accumulated in that previous life - just a couple of microphones, a baritone guitar, two drums, a horn, a reverb pedal. These few items, when combined with enough space - physical and mental, allowed the songs that form this record to become far more than the sum of their parts.
Vernon explains : “I recognize that the record is enigmatic and special in a strange way. I can’t take full credit for it, and I was the only one there.” Time spent with a complete absence of outside cultural influence somehow enabled him to hear an inner voice; he was somehow, amongst the skeletal trees and the purple sunsets, he found himself able to filter out the distractions of a sprawling city, and all its trends and opinions.
Like the surrounding environment, the words that are intertwined right into the fuzzy threads of the album grew naturally. “I just started playing the guitar and humming melodies and sounds that eventually turned into words. I didn’t even really know where it was going. I was going back and finding amazing things that meant something to me using that process. I was able to access deeper, darker and even happier sh*t just by this sort of subconscious way of doing it.”
As these demos and ideas were spreading, sometimes in twelve hour blocks of recording, a simple life of self-sufficiency still had to continue. Vernon moved into the cabin in the last moments of autumn, and the following months were to be continually sub-zero in temperature. Recording would be stopped so he could take the tractor into the forest to chop trees, which he then split to use as firewood. Food came in the shape of two deer shot in the forest - used carefully, these provided enough meat for the full three months of his stay. This was hunting as it was meant to be - not a hobby or a trophy sport, but a means of subsistance. One cut of shoulder meat was traded for a necessary guitar repair.
And once you’re aware of the environment in which these recordings were made, it becomes almost audible. The shadows cast by the burning firewood flicker across a nervously shaky guitar part; the crackle from the logs is amplified in the tape buzz; a Wintry shiver down the spine can be heard the tones of Vernon’s voice.
And what a voice. Vernon sings almost entirely in a spectral falsetto (at its most poignantly fragile on the closer, ‘re: Stacks’), which opens up a whole new set of associations. It’s a genuinely soulful sound - Vernon admits that he appreciates Sam Cooke, Mahalia Jackson, Nina Simone and Prince just as much as any Americana or alt-folk artist. The range of comparisions shows the reach of this music – for some, the vocal timbre calls to mind Tunde Adebimpe (of TV On The Radio); for others, the imagery-rich narratives, suggesting so much from so little are reminiscent of Iron & Wine’s The Creek Drank The Cradle.
Although the choral arrangements that appear throughout the album – most beautifully in the hymnal opening of ‘Lump Sum’ and ‘The Wolves (Act 1&2)’ – are simply the gorgeously hazy product of endless overdubs, there are actually a couple of collaborative moments. The first is on album opener ‘Flume’ where Christy Smith of the band Nola adds drums and an icily ethereal backdrop of layered flute. The second is in “For Emma”, where Boston musicians John DeHaven and Randy Pingrey add simple, beautiful horn parts.
For Emma, Forever Ago was originally self-released in late 2007 in a run of 500 copies and sold out instantly. Since then it has been picked up by Jagjaguwar in the USA and by 4AD in Europe, and the most captivating debut of 2007 has become one of the most sensational releases of 2008. Meanwhile, taking shape amidst the ever-expanding touring plans, is the new studio that Vernon is building up in the woods - hands on measuring, grinding, sawing, smashing until everything fits. He’s also writing more original material, and mixing and producing various records - including the new Land Of Talk album.
The four song Blood Bank collection EP was released in January. Both expansive and intimate, the four songs explore the darker and lighter natures of the seasons and what they signify, and offer a dynamic glimpse into the natural energy and refined craftsmanship that characterize Justin Vernon's music.
Having sold out both Tripod and National Stadium in Dublin last autumn, the sublime Bon Iver (aka Justin Vernon) plays his biggest Irish show yet as part of the run of shows at the Big Top as part of Galway Arts Festival.
The unique setting of Galway City is of peculiar personal significance to an extraordinary talent, who returns to the city for the first time since a visit in 1999, when Galway was the only place outside North America Vernon had ever spent significant time in. It remained the only foreign city he’d lived in up ‘til the time of his debut European show in May 2008.
Employed his first-visit-around selling phones in an Eircell shop on Eyre Square, Vernon returns to his former youthful haunts for the first time as one of the greatest international musical acts to emerge in recent years.
Bon Iver’s stunning breakthrough debut For Emma, Forever Ago is universally acknowledged as being among the very top albums to be released last year, making every significant list of best albums of 2008. His latest breathtaking EP Bloodbank was released in January.
**Tickets on sale 9am next Tuesday May 12th**
POD Concerts & Galway Arts Festival present
BON IVER
& special guest
Thursday July 23rd
The Big Top – Fisheries Field – Galway.
Doors – 7pm
Tickets €35.50 available from Ticketmaster and usual outlets www.ticketmaster.ie
www.boniver.org
www.myspace.com/boniver
Every album is a product of time and place, but this one more than most. Bon Iver (an intentional mis-spelling / adaptation of ‘Bon Hiver’, French for ‘Good Winter’) is the work of Justin Vernon, who spent three months alone in a log cabin in Northeast Wisconsin, living off the land, splitting wood, and hunting for food - a voluntary exile. And although this wasn’t the archetypal spell in the wilderness that many artists seek out, a deliberate scheme to create a “masterpiece”, some very special music was born out of the experience. For Emma, Forever Ago is the unexpected, triumphant result.
Vernon, a former member of Wisconsin quartet DeYarmond Edison, moved into the cabin after the break-up of his former outfit in 2006. He took with him very little of the equipment accumulated in that previous life - just a couple of microphones, a baritone guitar, two drums, a horn, a reverb pedal. These few items, when combined with enough space - physical and mental, allowed the songs that form this record to become far more than the sum of their parts.
Vernon explains : “I recognize that the record is enigmatic and special in a strange way. I can’t take full credit for it, and I was the only one there.” Time spent with a complete absence of outside cultural influence somehow enabled him to hear an inner voice; he was somehow, amongst the skeletal trees and the purple sunsets, he found himself able to filter out the distractions of a sprawling city, and all its trends and opinions.
Like the surrounding environment, the words that are intertwined right into the fuzzy threads of the album grew naturally. “I just started playing the guitar and humming melodies and sounds that eventually turned into words. I didn’t even really know where it was going. I was going back and finding amazing things that meant something to me using that process. I was able to access deeper, darker and even happier sh*t just by this sort of subconscious way of doing it.”
As these demos and ideas were spreading, sometimes in twelve hour blocks of recording, a simple life of self-sufficiency still had to continue. Vernon moved into the cabin in the last moments of autumn, and the following months were to be continually sub-zero in temperature. Recording would be stopped so he could take the tractor into the forest to chop trees, which he then split to use as firewood. Food came in the shape of two deer shot in the forest - used carefully, these provided enough meat for the full three months of his stay. This was hunting as it was meant to be - not a hobby or a trophy sport, but a means of subsistance. One cut of shoulder meat was traded for a necessary guitar repair.
And once you’re aware of the environment in which these recordings were made, it becomes almost audible. The shadows cast by the burning firewood flicker across a nervously shaky guitar part; the crackle from the logs is amplified in the tape buzz; a Wintry shiver down the spine can be heard the tones of Vernon’s voice.
And what a voice. Vernon sings almost entirely in a spectral falsetto (at its most poignantly fragile on the closer, ‘re: Stacks’), which opens up a whole new set of associations. It’s a genuinely soulful sound - Vernon admits that he appreciates Sam Cooke, Mahalia Jackson, Nina Simone and Prince just as much as any Americana or alt-folk artist. The range of comparisions shows the reach of this music – for some, the vocal timbre calls to mind Tunde Adebimpe (of TV On The Radio); for others, the imagery-rich narratives, suggesting so much from so little are reminiscent of Iron & Wine’s The Creek Drank The Cradle.
Although the choral arrangements that appear throughout the album – most beautifully in the hymnal opening of ‘Lump Sum’ and ‘The Wolves (Act 1&2)’ – are simply the gorgeously hazy product of endless overdubs, there are actually a couple of collaborative moments. The first is on album opener ‘Flume’ where Christy Smith of the band Nola adds drums and an icily ethereal backdrop of layered flute. The second is in “For Emma”, where Boston musicians John DeHaven and Randy Pingrey add simple, beautiful horn parts.
For Emma, Forever Ago was originally self-released in late 2007 in a run of 500 copies and sold out instantly. Since then it has been picked up by Jagjaguwar in the USA and by 4AD in Europe, and the most captivating debut of 2007 has become one of the most sensational releases of 2008. Meanwhile, taking shape amidst the ever-expanding touring plans, is the new studio that Vernon is building up in the woods - hands on measuring, grinding, sawing, smashing until everything fits. He’s also writing more original material, and mixing and producing various records - including the new Land Of Talk album.
The four song Blood Bank collection EP was released in January. Both expansive and intimate, the four songs explore the darker and lighter natures of the seasons and what they signify, and offer a dynamic glimpse into the natural energy and refined craftsmanship that characterize Justin Vernon's music.
