It might be over soon.
These are the words that open Bon Iver's third album, "22, A Million." The words that break the near five years of silence from the band. Listeners hear this phrase throughout the opening track, framed by ethereal harmonies and electronic loops. But what cannot be heard are frontman Justin Vernon's years of depression and passivity. Listeners cannot hear his disconnection from his music or his chest-caving anxiety attacks. These years of uncertainty, of pain and isolation, are funneled into one single phrase that popped into Vernon's head in a hotel room. The phrase, though sounding morbid or foreboding, is anything but. It is repeated like a prayer, a reassurance that pain might be over soon.
Bon Iver has managed to stay relevant, despite remaining largely inactive from 2012 to 2016. "Skinny Love," a song off the band's first 2007 album, remains the anthem of countless brokenhearted indie rockers across the globe. This album, "For Emma, Forever Ago," blossomed out of a cabin in the Wisconsin wilderness. Vernon spent three months in the dead of winter, hunting his own food and living in isolation. The reflection of the sun on the snow woke him up each morning to days spent writing and producing the album. When asked about the origin of "Emma," Vernon has said, "Emma isn't a person. Emma is a place that you get stuck in. Emma's a pain that you can’t erase."
Do not listen to this album expecting the falsetto-driven folk ballads of "For Emma, Forever Ago" or the larger than life orchestration of "Bon Iver, Bon Iver." "22, A Million" is modest. It is sparsely orchestrated, focusing on only a few elements and textures at a time. We hear Vernon raw and vulnerable with considerably less vocal effects. Despite this, it carries the universality of "Bon Iver" and the heart of "For Emma." It is a humble representation of humanity, a shared perspective of struggling to move on from an aching past.
At its roots, "22, A Million" is optimistic. It is the sound of a life reclaimed, of rebirth. However, throughout the album we hear a looming terror, a panic that cannot quite be swallowed. But above all, we hear hope. It might be over soon. We hear Vernon in his hotel room, grasping onto one phrase, the promise that adversity will pass.
It is easy to forget that artists are not creating for us. Yet Bon Iver's three distinct albums have provided the soundtracks for countless lives across the world. I will not pretend to know Vernon's story or to understand each obscure lyric he sings. He is a human that I have never known and will never know. Despite this, his music is achingly familiar to me. I hear my own experiences in the nameless stories he tells. I know I am not alone in this shared realization. We've been carved in fire, we've been caught in fire. We each carry an Emma, always present, always pulling us back to the past. The solution lies not in isolation, in stagnation, but instead in togetherness.
Music is a pathway that allows us to listen to ourselves and the people that surround us. It is a pathway to understanding that actively creates change in real-time. Music, even in its most intimate moments, is a pathway between us all. It is the nuts and bolts of humanity as well as its totality. It is made sacred between people and in return makes those relationships sacred. It is the buoyant substance that we grab onto when the water rises above our heads. The answer has been here the entire time: just music, always. (Trever Hagen)
