I wrote this review on Friday, April 11th, at midnight, intending to write it on Musicboard before realizing I had far too much to say. I’m not sure if it reads well to anyone who’s not an initiated Bon Iver fan, but I’m always advocating that people get up to speed—there’s plenty of video essays, podcasts, and op-eds to get you there. I’m aware that this is quite a departure from what I usually post on here, and so I’ve created a separate tab for what I suppose could be referred to as my “non-trans” work. Hope you enjoy :)
I guess I didn’t know what to expect from Bon Iver’s fifth season. After i,i—which I enjoyed but ultimately thought was messy—some fans thought Justin Vernon was done with Bon Iver. He’d tread every season, after all, with For Emma, Forever Ago being winter, Bon Iver, Bon Iver as spring, 22, A Million as summer, and i,i as autumn. By the time his fourth album rolled around, he had officially recognized this “four seasons” framing of his work, releasing a promotional video called Bon Iver: Autumn.
Toward the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, however, new singles began to emerge labeled “BON IVER: SEASON FIVE.” The first of these, called PDLIF (or Please Don’t Live In Fear) but labeled “PILOT,” felt engaging, important, and timely. The second, AUATC (or Ate Up All Their Cake) did not engross me in the same way. Both singles felt more of the moment than was typical of Vernon’s work, with lyrics like “And it’s up to me if I don’t wear a mask” and, of course, “Please don’t live in fear.” This was by no means out of nowhere, though, as Vernon had expressed clear support for the Bernie Sanders campaign (he performed at a rally in Iowa) and begun to include more social critique in his lyrics (such as on We and Hey, Ma).
As Bon Iver exceeded the natural four seasons, the metaphor had little room to expand, and “season” ceased to refer to cycles of nature and instead to television and serial media. In a way, his breach of the metaphor made it inevitable that whatever he did next had to be a departure. At this point, I was bracing myself for an album made entirely of sequentially released singles, each titled as five-letter acronyms; that album never materialized, and perhaps for the best.
For the next few years, all that appeared were singles and guest appearances. Vernon found himself on Taylor Swift’s folklore and evermore, and eventually on the remix album for Charli xcx’s BRAT. He worked with Beverly Glenn-Copeland, Ethan Gruska, Ilsey, Zach Bryan, and Aaron Dessner. He seemed to be on tour forever. I didn’t think we would hear from Bon Iver again, at least not over the length of an album, and I had come to peace with this notion. What do you do when you’ve exhausted the seasons?
Then, on October 18th, 2024, he released SABLE, a four- (but really three-) song EP with a dark cover. On my first listen, I was pleased. For the first time in years, he didn’t seem lost, or disorganized, or trapped by the direction his career had gone.
In fact, he was disavowing it:
I got caught compiling my own news (THINGS BEHIND THINGS BEHIND THINGS)
I can’t rest on no dynasty / Yeah, what is wrong with me? (S P E Y S I D E)
There was a refreshing, yet startling clarity to SABLE,. It was a proper folk record, without all the tools he had hidden behind in the past—no electronics, little vocal harmony, no reliance on falsetto, little obscurantist lyricism. For the first time ever, I was listening to Bon Iver for the lyrics more than I was for the sound.
I quickly noticed that the album title ended with a comma, a staple of his prior work. Where there was a For Emma, there was a Forever Ago. Where there was a Bon Iver, there was another. Where there were 22, there were A Million. An i for an i. Here, there was just SABLE, but there was also a comma. It didn’t seem unreasonable to deduce that something else was coming.
SABLE, was released in the fall, and fABLE was released in the spring. Each disc certainly sounds like the season it was released in (I’m sure this experience is enhanced by my living ninety minutes from Vernon), but when combined into a single release—SABLE, fABLE—the seasonality of Bon Iver thus far is forced to collapse. While there is some continuity between the old and the new—there’s clearly some intentionality to the styling of the song titles; the album title is made up of two parts, separated by a comma; each disc is reminiscent of the season it was released during—it is also a necessary departure. There is no overarching theme between the song titles, like there was on his second, third, and fourth albums (though not For Emma!). Featured artists are no longer hidden or cast off completely. There is also none of the chaos that i,i got caught up in. So what is there?
There’s folk, and there’s electronics, but neither overpowers the other. They complement each other in a way that was not true of i,i, or even of 22, A Million.
There’s also happiness, joy, and optimism. It’s not that this had never shown up before in his music (you might recall the lyrics Well it’s all just scared of dying / But isn’t this a beach? off the closing track on i,i), but it has never been this front and center. If this is the final album we get from Bon Iver—and I think it will be, if the title of the closing track is to be taken seriously—it will be a happy ending to a story that has so often centered gloom, sickness, and depression. This is made possible by SABLE, where he steps out of the shadows and makes his sadness and regret plain as day, and which Vernon himself refers to as “a controlled burn clearing the way for new possibilities.”
SABLE, fABLE is both a return and a departure. It returns to the simplicity of For Emma both in its somewhat stripped-back production and its departure from the thematic titling of the previous three records (and the abrasive production of the prior two). It makes sense for the album to be both these things at once: the album cover contains only two elements, a salmon background and a black square, which are reversed on the album cover for SABLE,. I don’t think it will be controversial to say there is a yin and a yang here, especially as this symbol was also in prominent use on the album art for 22, A Million. Justin is embracing his contradictions, which no longer tear him apart from within but coalesce into a cohesive whole.
It is also a departure, full stop. Bon Iver is waving goodbye. I, for one, am waving back.