Wisconsin’s Justin Vernon returns with his fifth album, a sparse, tender, sometimes world-weary, but also often beautiful, distinctive fusion of folk, indie, R&B, soul, country, and a dash of soft rock, all wrapped in celebration of the salmon pink - “the colour of life”. It’s his first since 2019’s more experimental I,I, and partly released last October in the EP Sable, it also harks back to the accessibility of 2007’s For Emma, Long Ago. While old friends bring in other instruments – pedal steel (Greg Leisz), fiddle (Rob Moose), saxophone (Michael Lewis), and trumpet (Trever Hagen) – the focus point is Vernon’s guitar and intimate, melancholy vocals. After the elipsis opening the first three tracks are fairly sparse, particularly Awards Season, and Speyside is also classic Bon Iver, but the pick of that first batch is Things Behind Things Behind Things - taking self-reflection to a new perspective: “I get caught looking in the mirror on the regular / And what I see there resembles some competitor.” Vernon is weary of touring these days, there are still hints of optimism in his special hue of darkness, with the second part of the album’s centrepiecebring Everything Is Peaceful Love, with it’s clip-clop rhythms, soulful, country flavours and heartwarming chorus. This is where soul really kicks in, and here are some stranger, voice distortions and forced effects on the this part of the release (Walk On’s oddities come out a little soul-saccharine, and even more so with added cringe on the sugar full-on soul of I’ll Be There, or especially on From – “So tell me when the coast is clear/ Wanna kiss you ear from ear/ Can I take another year?”– ouch; though Day One is more intriguingly odd), but better tracks include I Could Only Wait (featuring Danielle Haim), and the two closers There’s A Rhythm, followed by the brief Au Revoir. Slow, lingering, and still experimental, sometimes indulgent, Vernon nevertheless again somehow captures that surprising, and sometimes sweet meeting point between mainstream appeal with the downbeat, wrapped in his own eccentricity and intimacy. Out on Jagjaguwar.
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