Bon Iver, Bon Iver (Take Two)

I tracked down a low-quality leak of Bon Iver’s self-titled album near the start of May. My internet connection was terrible—it was Southeast Asia—and I was sort of walking around packing, organizing for my move back to the US while I waited the requisite hour for the album to download. I wasn’t a fanboy of For Emma, Forever Ago despite the high playcount in my iTunes library, but I was intrigued, perhaps more by the thought of having the album several weeks in advance than by the album itself.

(My Living Room in Pakse) 

It was midmorning when I put the thing on, and I didn’t know what to make of it. “Perth” thundered out of my speakers and I was suddenly hooked. Really? This was Bon Iver? It didn’t sound myopic or frozen: it sounded like something full-grown, rich, green. It was warm where For Emma was cold; the affect here had expanded to become epic yet still personal. It was a Justin Vernon who finally sang in Hadestown, Orpheus who’d learned to trust others to sing the rest. The sound cut an easy path through my mind for the next half hour as I scurried through the house displacing boxes, organizing the last of my stuff. “Beth/Rest” made my jaw drop. I stopped and sat down on the couch laughing, thinking “Really? He actually wrote this song? Is this even happening?” It’s eighties melodrama at its absolute best—every time I hear this song I have to suppress the desire to redefine my relationship with whoever’s closest. It’s the least “Bon Iver” song on the album, but that doesn’t keep it from sounding amazing every time. And I mean. Every. Time.

(Colorado Summer) 

I recently began tagging albums according to their season in my iTunes library. M. Ward’s Transfiguration of Vincent is summer because of its warm, earth-yellow tones. Sonya Cotton’s fall-leaf album Red River is an obvious choice for autumn. I try to step back and really let the music’s tone and verve determine the choice of season rather than when I came to the album. I can’t place Bon Iver’s latest, though. It’s a warm, kind cycle of songs, but I couldn’t tell you which season they describe most. Justin Vernon lays waste to Halloween; he sings about iced highways and one-pieced swimmers. Is the album art winter defrosting to spring or a vibrant summer? I can’t decide.



In the end, I have to throw these classifiers out because this is, for me, one of those rare albums that I think—and hope—will be relevant in each season. Barbara calls them “life albums”. I’m such a geek that I’ve even made a list of these life albums—cycles of music that I keep picking up no matter the season or year, no matter how long ago I discovered it.

(Winter in Wausau) 

Along with seasons, there are images I associate with each album: images that denote place, state of mind, memory. I wrote a while back about Shearwater’s The Golden Archipelago and how it denoted the South Pacific for me. I see some of my favourite images of the Midwest, Wisconsin, duck-call lakes and reeds in Chris Kiehne’s Pray For Daylight, and long lazy trailer park summers in the National’s Alligator. I don’t yet have this for Bon Iver; I’ve walked desert paths in Colorado, and I’m sure I’ll see a number of snow-scapes that resonate, but I wonder if this album didn’t come to me a little too early—I wonder if this is something I’ll be carrying to Mongolia, if it will invoke the wind and plains more than anything else. Time will tell, I guess.

 --Duke

Pray For Daylight Album & Lyrics

From Chris Kiehne himself, a link to Pray For Daylight. Included below are the lyrics, as well. Give it a spin.

(The Link)

http://www.mediafire.com/?69bjtkep3ama1ar

(The Lyrics)

SISTER BLACK MARIA
Shine on, Sister Black Maria;
let your raging dark be my holy home.
Seal my eyes with your storms and shadows.
Let me rest in the warmth of the scars that I’ve sown.

Shine on, Sister Black Maria;
I can still remember the night
that I found your beautiful grave
and how I sang from the shore
until the cold waters parted
and how you were dancing
like a rose at the bottom of the lake.

DIOMEDEA
They rose in the dark from the furious ground,
and, with their poisonous claws, they laid our fathers down.
There’s no hope for us there in that reservoir town.
The streets where we’d lived are scarlet rivers now.
Diomedea, come and carry us home. Brace our willow arms.

The wind off the lake comes and rattles her ribs,
and I hold back her hair. I do simple things,
but the whites of her eyes have turned black and red,
and the ghost in her veins speaks in silences.
Diomedea, come and carry her home on her wicker throne.

THE WALKING DEAD
(Instrumental)

RACHEL LIED
Baby’s the fawn at the vine.
Baby was shot down in flight.
Rachel was here, and she lied.

Baby was born with burnt eyes
and a razorblade cut for a smile.
Rachel was here, and she lied.

PHAEDO
Little One, I will lay your bones in the ground
and pull the atalanta out of your mouth.
All the silences will sound, and your body will turn.

Little One, there is dawn rising up from the night
and boundless swarms of sparrows born from the fire.

Little One, there are ghosts rising up from your eyes.
We will quit this bed of wires, and our bodies will turn.
Heather and fern, the breath of the wolf, the heart of the dove.

Little One, I will lay your bones in the ground.

PRAY FOR DAYLIGHT
From a house on the water, while watching the silences scar your perfect face,
I pulled the moths from your mouth. I collected their wings.

I had dreamt of your father, alive, with your brothers, wrapped up in sheets of flame.
When I awoke, your heart rang, but your colors had faded.

Hang on, Little One. The fever is not in your blood; it will break with the sun.

From a house on the water, we watch as their bodies rise up from out of the waves.
Their emerald eyes will not take you from me.

As they rage through the darkness, I beg for your silence, you shout their cursed names
and when I offer my arms, you call them your grave.

Hang on, Little One. The fever is not in your blood. It will break with the sun.

THE WIND THROUGH YOUR WOUNDS
The wind through your wounds will give us away,
and they’ll tear the breath from out of your body.

A burgundy grin and a ravening stare;
this town we’d loved is a cradle of bees
and we’ll all fall down in waves, like sparrows.
A hundred million bloodstained angels.

You would not believe the things you’ll do to me.

The darkening woods and the ghosts on your face
and the terrible things calling you towards the lake;

the merciless dawn will deny us its grace.
No mighty arms are going to save us.
We’ll all fall down in waves, like sparrows.
A hundred million bloodstained angels.

You would not believe the thing you’ll do to me.
Nothing is released.

A SPECIAL PROVIDENCE
I left you lying in the reeds.
The worm was at your skin,
and as your desperate, caterwauling screams
rose and silenced in the wind,

the blood crept out from you in wings.
The sparrows hit the sea,
and, though I’d said a million things,
I just left you lying in the reeds.

The rain fell hard into the church
as they hammered down the doors.
They barreled in and you were first.
You pulled me, laughing, to the floor.

You’d torn your dress out in the woods
and your teeth were caked with dirt.
You said, “I think you’ve lost the war,
but I promise this won’t hurt.
You’re still young enough to learn.”

SISTER BLACK MARIA PT II
Shine on, Sister Black Maria;
let your raging dark be my holy home.
Seal my eyes with your storms and shadows.
Let me rest in the warmth of the scars that I’ve sown.

Shine on, Sister Black Maria;
I can still remember the night
that I found your beautiful grave
and how I sang from the shore
until the cold waters parted
and how you were dancing
like a rose at the bottom of the lake.

A BASKET OF BONE
In a blanket of bone, I followed you home.
I watched as you slowly stepped out of your skin.
You slid round the room with the loveliest grin,
and your throat was slick and sweet.

You offered it to me.

We slipped into the woods and you took off your shoes.
You dirtied your feet in the October leaves
and we happily chewed all the bark off the trees.
You fed me honey wine and covered me in night.

In a basket of bone, I carried you home.
I fixed you a crown out of old chicken wire
and we sat on the shore as the river caught fire.
The freshwater ghosts carried into the night.

Your father was there.

He gave you his eyes, and you saw me as a boy.
Though I swore that I had grown, you knew it was a lie.