![]() ![]() Vernon is indoors at the piano with his best friend and former bandmate, Phil Cook from Megafaun, rehearsing for an appearance the pair will make on Jimmy Fallon's TV show in two days' time. ![]() In a surprising move, he has chosen not to perform a track from the new Bon Iver album, but a medley of Bonnie Raitt's I Can't Make You Love Me and Donny Hathaway's A Song for You an unlikely combination, but one that in its mingling of longing and isolation nods to familiar Bon Iver territory, and exhibits Vernon's extraordinary voice and phrasing. ![]() ![]() It is a move, too, that in its boldness perhaps says much about how this young musician's life has changed in the last four years. In the summer of 2007, Vernon self-released the first Bon Iver record, For Emma, Forever Ago – an album that would see a wider release on the Jagjaguwar label the following February, and wider yet on 4AD that May. It was an album that received the most rapturous critical reception, and whose songs became the subject of great devotion. The story of its creation, meanwhile, acquired something approaching the air of legend: following the break-up of his band and his relationship, and suffering a serious bout of mono, Vernon left North Carolina and retreated to his native Wisconsin, spending a remote winter alone at his father's cabin, eating venison and writing and recording the nine songs that would make up For Emma. #Phil cook anyody lyriocs Patch#The cabin stands not far from here, built by Vernon's father on a rich stretch of land, a quiet patch of wilderness. When I first met him, in the spring of 2008, he stood awkwardly on the steps of Tate Britain, half-shaven in a plaid shirt and carrying his guitar case. When he spoke, it was with a kind of disbelief that anyone should have heard his songs at all. Today, he stands in his front room in green basketball shirt and torn sneakers, looking a little more self-assured. The intervening four years have, after all, offered ringing endorsement of his talents. The success of For Emma – the album sales, the world tours and the festival shows – was followed by a range of collaborations: with Volcano Choir and Gayngs and Anaïs Mitchell, and with Kanye West for his album My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, which propelled his music further into the mainstream. When we meet this time, he has already been profiled by Vanity Fair and the New York Times and is set to appear on the covers of both Billboard and Spin. He has also, I overhear, been asked to be the face of a leading whiskey brand. So the wide-eyed disbelief of that first meeting on the gallery steps has settled somewhat."But it feels like it's still going," Vernon says steadily, sitting on the sofa of his basement studio – a long, airy room looking out over woodland. At a certain point I expected it to just stop, so that I could catch my breath – and I had moments like that for sure. But at the same time, there was Kanye calling. And so all this thing, I don't feel like I've been able to escape it it feels like it's continuing to grow. And I'm more used to it, but it's not like now I'm used to it and it's not going to get any weirder."Īmid the weirdness, the touring, collaborations and associated madness, it would be easy to wonder where exactly Vernon might have found the time and space to write a second Bon Iver record – For Emma was, after all, an album that felt gestated, pored over, complete, the product of an unpressured stretch of time and a need to say something. The writing process was different this time around "Mm-hmm," he says, his speaking voice deep and growling. ![]()
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