“Spread love, y’all”, urges Justin Vernon as the last strains of the second and final encore of ‘RABi’ echo through the auditorium. It is a song about the sanctity of personal safety and gratitude for, and appreciation of the people who are around you. Stepping out of the building into the cool October night air we then see four or five over-zealous security personnel laying waste to some hapless individual. For some, the message from the Wisconsin native and man who is Bon Iver was clearly lost in translation.
And this contradiction reflects a lot of my thoughts and feelings about Bon Iver. In my mind, Justin Vernon is still this reclusive guy holed up in some remote log cabin writing these wistful tunes about loss and Bon Iver are a band playing at The Breeders-curated ATP festival at the Butlin’s Holiday Camp in Minehead. But this was before their eponymous second album hit platinum pay dirt and shot Vernon and his travelling companions into arena world.
And it is in that very world that we locate Justin Vernon and Bon Iver tonight on the second date of their previously postponed tour of the United Kingdom and Europe. He stands there, just off-centre, inside one of six LED pods that resemble neon arrowheads, the other five occupied by his band. They are positioned underneath a fleet of flying fluorescent chevrons that swoop and soar in tandem with the cadences of the music. If you were to say the light show was impressive, you would be accused of massive understatement.
The music matches the lighting. More expansive than ever it was on the Somerset coast 13 years ago but still possessing all of those mournful, haunting qualities one associates with Justin Vernon and Bon Iver. His voice – often heavily distorted through a combination of Auto-Tune, Vocoder, and programmed effects – rises imperiously over a mesmeric blanket of electronics, keyboards, saxophone, and drums.
Bon Iver play 21 songs in total this evening, almost half of which are drawn from their fourth, and up to press last studio album, 2019’s i,i. There is one new song, though, ‘Please Don’t Live In Fear’. Written during lockdown, it is majestic, possessing as it does all of those breathtaking textures we have become accustomed to over the years with that Bon Iver sound. But Vernon does not dismiss his past. ‘Blood Bank’, the first encore, brims with emotion and power. And earlier in the set his solo reading of ‘re: Stacks’ – just him stood in the crosshairs of single spotlights with his acoustic guitar and a voice stripped of all disguise – is spine tingling. Perhaps, after all, Justin Vernon is not really that far removed from the man that I recall.
Photos: Simon Godley
