It's almost been a year since the release of Bon Iver's debut release, For Emma, Forever Ago. About three months ago I finally picked it up and gave it a listen. I think it's a great album, maybe not as great as some reviewers said, but a very solid and touching album. You could say I wasn't particularly excited for this release but I was interested in hearing where Bon Iver had gone since last year.
The EP starts off with the title track, a subdued sombre piece, classic Bon Iver. The song slowly builds to something of a climax, though still a subdued one. It ends with quiet guitar feedback and some static buzz. This is definitely the highlight of these four songs. "Blood Bank" sounded like the
Bon Iver that we all know but progressing slightly.
The next song, "Beach Baby", really isn't that interesting. It's just an acoustic song, nothing more. The playing is adequate and it has the signature beautiful singing voice, but it just doesn't add anything.
"Babys" is a song I really like. It has piano riff that really reminds me off Sigur Ros mixed with Arcade Fire. It just has this really uplifting feeling, it just repeats and repeats, getting slightly more intense as it goes. It's the kind of music you want to run down the street to.
Right, I'm just going to come out and say that I hate vocoders/auto-tune, and Bon Iver doesn't make me hate them any less. It just sounds like he decided to mess around with auto-tune and record it. It adds nothing to the EP and ends up just being irritating.
In the end only half of this EP is really worth listening to. Two promising songs, 1 mediocre, and 1 actually awful song. But fear not, the "Blood Bank" and "Babys" are promising enough that one should definitely look forward to the next Bon Iver release. Let's just hope he doesn't try to be Kayne next time.
Rating: 2.5 out of 5.
Tracklisting:
1. Blood Bank
2. Beach Baby
3. Babys
4. Woods
-Lucas Thurston
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