Bon Iver's Justin Vernon has sat at many uneasy crossroads. Down one path, for example, lies the unpretentious hometown scene that birthed him, where bands are expected to wear a certain workaday humility. Down the other, located physically and figuratively far from Eau Claire, Wis., lies recording sessions with Taylor Swift and Kanye West, Grammy wins and the trappings of A-list-hood.
Each path entails a fair bit of mythology about bootstraps and making good, and it's tough to follow them both at once; to reside comfortably in both spaces simultaneously. But mythology is, after all, at the core of Bon Iver's story, wherein a Midwestern everyman, bruised by lost love and the dissolution of his band, retreated to a Wisconsin cabin to craft his masterpiece, 2007's For Emma, Forever Ago. His story remains tethered to that cabin, but also to the global superstardom that followed.
Now that For Emma has been consigned to the ranks of Forever Ago — and followed by other decorated, sonically surprising albums — he's left to ponder and pursue a new path. Vernon has always stayed closer to his hometown than most household names. But he's not the same guy who entered that cabin. The pain that once animated him has, by his own account, subsided, and it's best not to contemplate the toll on his psyche if it hadn't; if he hadn't done the necessary work on himself but instead headed out in search of fresh anguish, all for the purpose of remaining on-brand.
Of course, Bon Iver's saga has many chapters, and extends well beyond that endlessly recounted origin story. It spans the sweeping orchestral grandeur of 2011's Bon Iver, Bon Iver; the scuffed-up majesty of 2016's 22, A Million; the hard-won wonder and reflection that seeps into 2019's i,i; and beyond. Vernon, to his credit, remains willing to stretch the boundaries of his own sound. But his long-awaited new chapter, SABLE, fABLE, revels in fresh comforts in subtle, surprising ways, without sacrificing the ache that animated his early work.
The first shift that leaps out on SABLE, fABLE — the title of which is meant to reflect the coexistence of darkness and joy — lies in Vernon's lyrics, which find his style of oblique poetry sharing space with clearer observations, complete with moments of literalism. Take SABLE, fABLE's album-opener, "THINGS BEHIND THINGS BEHIND THINGS": "I get caught looking in the mirror on the regular / And what I see there resembles some competitor / I see things behind things behind things / And there are rings within rings within rings."
In the joyful single "Everything Is Peaceful Love," that literalism even threatens — at least on the surface — to scan as a willful refusal to see the world as it is. But the song isn't a documentary-style recounting of the state of the world. It's an aspiration; an admonition to hang on to moments of joy while they last. It's a way of approaching the unfurling of our lives as a pathway to something other than paranoia and resentment, anger and fear; it's a call to engage, reflect, bloom, work. It's also where SABLE, fABLE's larger aim begins to come into focus.
Bon Iver has rolled out SABLE, fABLE in pieces, beginning with its first three songs, which were released as an EP titled SABLE, late last year. But as the beginning of a more expansive album, the EP is a bit of a head-fake. The comparatively downcast nature of those songs — "THINGS BEHIND THINGS BEHIND THINGS," "S P E Y S I D E" and "AWARDS SEASON" — separates them from what follows, and that's not even getting into the fact that the remainder of the album's tracklist abandons the all-caps formatting.
Once the warm connective tissue of "Short Story" gives way to "Everything Is Peaceful Love" — and the arrangements surrounding Vernon's voice shift from tentative and somber to nakedly celebratory — SABLE, fABLE's themes of renewal come fully into focus. But it's worth sitting with "AWARDS SEASON" for a moment, because it feels like a fulcrum — not only for the album, but for the larger trajectory of Vernon's music.
Vernon has said that Bon Iver's first four albums represented seasons: For Emma, Forever Ago was winter; Bon Iver, Bon Iver was spring; 22, A Million was summer; and i,i was fall. It's taken him some time and reflection to sort out where to go once that cycle was complete, given that he was teasing a "SEASON FIVE" project as far back as 2020, when Bon Iver began dropping loose singles in the early days of the pandemic. But "AWARDS SEASON" feels like a statement of fresh purpose, not least because it lands at a moment of peace and acceptance from which the rest of the record builds: "It's so hard to explain / And the facts are strange / But you know what will stay? / Everything we've made."
It's worth pausing at the end of "AWARDS SEASON" to welcome the pivot that follows. Having closed the song with a weary acknowledgement of a love that took time and hard work to build, Vernon — and SABLE, fABLE itself — shifts gears to let new light in. From there, Vernon seems liberated and at peace, free to bask in the warm glow of a less burdened version of himself. ("Everything Is Peaceful Love" even pivots instrumentally, echoing 2011's "Beth/Rest" and its embrace of '80s adult-contemporary touchstones. Once you notice the sonic similarity to Chris de Burgh's 1986 hit "The Lady in Red," you can't un-notice it.)
The remainder of SABLE, fABLE feels loose compared to the album's opening moments, as Vernon brings in guests — Dijon and Flock of Dimes in "Day One," Danielle Haim in "If Only I Could Wait" — to amplify the album's ideas of connectedness and community. Some tracks, like "Walk Home" and "If Only I Could Wait," practically radiate with impatient romantic desire. Others, like "From" and "I'll Be There," aim for reassurance. Taken cumulatively, SABLE, fABLE forms an arc in which tentativeness gives way to an embrace of possibilities exemplified by "There's a Rhythmn [sic]," in which Vernon explicitly acknowledges the pull between his Wisconsin home and the call of new love in Los Angeles: "I've had one home that I've known / And maybe it's the time to go / I could leave behind the snow / For a land of palm and gold."
SABLE, fABLE lives in those possibilities, and in the accumulation of hardships and opportunities that got him to this fresh start. Here's to many more joyous seasons to come.
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