Bon Iver enraptures New York with songs from the Wisconsin woods

December 10, 2008, at Town Hall

By Eleanor Whitney
Published: December 13th, 2008 | 4:40pm

Waiting for Bon Iver at New York’s Town Hall, the audience shifted in anticipation in their plush red theater seats. They contemplated the elegant room with its gilt wainscoting and the stage set with two drum sets and two racks of guitars, samplers, a keyboard, and a lone bass drum. They whispered, “This is going to be good,” to one another. They burst into applause when Justin Vernon strode onto stage sporting a track jacket, sneakers and slacks, and a scraggly beard that made it easy to imagine him holed up in a woodland cabin writing songs to weather the cold. He started off the set singing a cappella, “I’m up in the woods, I’m down on my mind, I’m building a still to slow down the time…” and slowly, gently, the voices of his band members came in, invoking the echoing, winter woods just steps from the blinding lights of Times Square.

The set drew songs from Bon Iver’s full length For Emma, Forever Ago (Jagjaguwar) and from its new EP Blood Bank (Jagjaguwar). Most songs, such as “Creature Fear,” “Blood Bank,” and “For Emma,” started off simply and built up to include pulsing electronics and dual, resonating drums. While many of Bon Iver’s contemporaries follow this approach to song writing, Vernon and company pulled it off with a charmingly unfussy simplicity that let the beauty of the songs shine through. An emotionally intense high point was “Skinny Love,” during which Vernon played a vintage guitar with eye catching metal work and a bright tone that drew sighs from onlookers.

Toward the end of the set, following “Re: Stacks,” where Vernon filled the enraptured hall with just the strumming of his guitar and voice, he explained that he didn’t really like encores. A member of the otherwise reverent audience interrupted him suddenly and loudly, imploring him to keep playing, explaining, “New York had had a shit show, horrible economy, and Bon Iver makes good music!” The entire audience erupted in sympathetic laughter and Vernon nodded in agreement.

The set highlight quickly followed. Vernon invited audience members to sing along to “Wolves” and after lengthy instructions about how to build the volume and where to break, he began, and the audience followed. As they sang, “What might have been lost” over and over, they gained confidence in their voices as the song crescendoed. After the bridge, all came back in with heartfelt “ahhhs!” and voices resounded exuberantly about the hall as if Vernon had stepped into a plush echo chamber.

At the end of the set, Vernon announced, “We’ve come to the part of the evening where we’ve run out of stuff [to play],” and expressed his gratitude to be playing Town Hall, when Bon Iver had only been together as group since last January. With that, the band members gathered together in the center of the stage around a single mic. Vernon strummed an un-amplified acoustic guitar, and in four-part harmony the group sang a cover of Sarah Siskind’s song “Lovin’s For Fools.” Evoking swooning and even some tears from the audience, it was a bittersweet end to an altogether lovely set.

For more photos from this show visit Venus Zine's Flickr page.

Review of Bon Iver's For Emma, Forever Ago

Comments

Want to tell us what you think? Please click here to log in or just click here for quick comments

gooboy (over 3 years)
Great article Eleanor! I saw him in May at ATP UK and from the beautiful scene you painted there I'd say that we experienced similarly haunting shows!