Bon Iver: Justin Opens Up

Justin Vernon; the leading light behind the Canadian band, Bon Iver, and also Kanye West's favourite living artist, is currently in the limelight after the release of the immensely anticipated album 22, A Million, which came out at the end of September. The album is an unique mix of a very innovative, new style for the band, and, on the first listen, sounds very experimental and futuristic. With an eclectic variety of melodies and tracks, the album marked a significant change in direction for the Canadian folk artists, and, despite being hugely popular right from the outset, it left some listeners with a certain confusion as to the reasoning behind this change in style. 

There was no doubt in anyone’s mind that this was an incredibly well-put-together, thought-out, stunning album, and it has already been hailed as their best yet, but many people were intrigued by the cryptic, mysterious element to the record; with the strange track names and seemingly random iconography on the album cover. For all you ‘intriguees’, Justin gave a long press conference in his hometown of Eau Claire, Wisconsin, just before the album’s release where he fielded questions for an hour and a half that give a fantastic insight into the origins and thought-processes behind this wonderful new album. If you’d like to watch it, you can find it here, but if not (and it’s unsurprising that you don’t have 90 minutes to listen to Justin chat away, it’s quite long), here are some of the most interesting bits. 

Justin revealed that his favourite number is, in fact, the number 22, and this fed directly into the album’s title; 22, A Million. He told journalists how he loved the duality of the number, the symmetry, and thought it was so great, that it deserved prime place in the new album. 

When questioned on the style, and the change in direction, Justin opened up. One journalist from Scandinavia quizzed him on the topic, provoking laughter when stating: “Everyone in Scandinavia is quite depressed all the time, as it’s always dark.. So your old music really hit it off when it was first released. Why the sudden move away from this style?”. However, this led into an interesting discussion as Justin admitted he essentially wanted to make something completely different and, in his words, ‘smash it up’; take what he did before, chop it, change it, fully mix it up and create something totally unique from anything he had done before. This is the simple crux of the change; Vernon wanted to do something distinct and push the boundaries a bit further. 

The artwork was a topic that intrigued many of the journalists, asking for influences, inspiration, reasoning etc. Justin credited his friend, Eric, who had fused religious iconography, home inspiration, and his own original artwork to create the cryptic cover that sits on the shelves today. When also asked why his face is so contorted and barely recognisable in the artwork, Vernon admitted he hated seeing pictures of himself, and also doesn’t want people to associate his music with his face. He referenced Pink Floyd saying that when listening to their music, you never think of Nick Mason, and he similarly doesn’t want his listeners to have to put up with his mug in their heads when listening to Skinny Love. 

One journalist asked Justin to help him out a little bit, as he was totally lost at how to introduce the tracks off the new album on the radio; they are so bizarrely named that he didn’t even know how to begin. Justin then read them all out to help the invitees (this is near the end of the video if you want to hear it), and, basically; just read them, ignore the spaces, and don’t mention the stuff in the brackets, then you’ll be fine. He also revealed he nearly named 45, 45: Fortify, and was very chuffed with the wordplay before realising it was just too “see what I did there”, so sacked off the idea. 

What came out of the press conference was Justin’s complete lack of arrogance, and genuinely nice personality. He began every response by thanking the journalist in question for making the trip, and also seemed to thoroughly enjoy just chatting away. At one point he simply said: “look at us, we are all here in a room just talking about music, that is both ridiculous and amazing.” Justin is either unaware of his genius, or he is just a thoroughly down-to-earth, good guy, and to still be able to chat away with journalists like they are long lost friends, not come across as pretentious or pompous when discussing his inspirations, and still produce three albums of this mind-blowing calibre, is nothing short of remarkable.