For Emma, Forever Ago-- Bon Iver's 2007 debut LP-- was nearly eclipsed by its own (endlessly repeated) mythology. Famously: Singer and songwriter Justin Vernon curled up in a "remote northern Wisconsin cabin" for three epic, torturous months of post-heartbreak introspection/catharsis, writing the songs which would ultimately comprise his first solo album. For Emma was self-released by Vernon before being picked up by Jagjaguwar and afforded a proper launch; grateful listeners swooned and shivered, circling the record like kids around a bonfire. For Emma became synonymous with dark winter ennui: the musical translation of earth's cruelest season.
By the end of 2008, Bon Iver-- along with similarly bearded, folk-minded acts like Fleet Foxes-- became emblematic of a new, woodsier trend in indie rock. Although it boasted its own brand of (presumably unintentional) theater, For Emma was frequently cited as an antidote of sorts to Auto-Tuned, vocoder-laden pop. It seems particularly skewering, then, that Bon Iver's four-song follow-up-- the Blood Bank EP-- closes with a long, a cappella folk song wherein Vernon's voice is so aggressively filtered through a vocoder that you're likely to back off the stereo and double-check the contents of your drink.
Recorded in four different locations at varying times (from December 2006 through June 2008, in an assortment of apartments, roads, hunting lodges, and studios), Blood Bank's A-side ("Blood Bank", "Beach Baby") is considerably less jarring than its second half, although neither feels unprecedented-- while Vernon wrote these songs to be played with a band (unlike on For Emma, Vernon's got two steady backers here), the EP is still imbued with all the intimacy and desperation that made For Emma so beloved.
"Blood Bank" opens with prodding acoustic strums and a series of hushed "oohs" (unmistakably reminiscent of Iron and Wine's lo-fi debut, The Creek Drank the Cradle), before Vernon begins: "I met you at the blood bank, we were looking at the bags," he explains, tossing off the kind of opening sentence most aspiring novelists spend their whole lives praying for. "Beach Baby", with its steel guitar and stomach-punching lyrics ("When you're out, tell your lucky one to know that you'll leave/ But don't you lock when you're fleeing, I'd like not to hear keys") feels spare and fleeting, disappearing into the runout groove before you realize it's over.
"Babys" features a prickly, unrelenting keyboard riff and a curiously zoological refrain ("Summer comes, to multiply!") but "Woods" is the most intriguing cut here: For armchairists prone to detached psychoanalysis, For Emma's legend might suggest that Vernon has a penchant for escapism, and there's no easier way to eschew the crags of your own voice than by piling on studio effects. Vocoder isn't exactly a shack in the mountains, but, when employed to excess, it's about as close as a vocalist can get to going off-grid. Still, "Woods" feels like more of a formal experiment than an emotional one, and the results are oddly and unexpectedly stunning. Vernon's folksinger-in-a-cabin origins might not be exceptional, but "Woods" sort of is-- it's disorienting and delicate, a mix of Vernon's staunchly organic vocals and otherworldly effects, punctuated, on occasion, by sharp, falsetto howls. It's the kind of thing that sounds hideous on paper, but eventually coalesces in practice; ironically, the Auto-Tune serves as more of a muddler than a safety net, and without it, it's hard to know if "Woods" would feel so intoxicating.
Blood Bank certainly dispels concerns that Vernon's accomplishment was somehow environmental-- that For Emma's poetic circumstances, and not its contents, were responsible for its success. Blood Bank is still a wintry record-- there's snow on the cover, and lyrics about snow, and, if you listen on vinyl, the metaphorical snow of hissing surface noise-- but Bon Iver is hardly a seasonal taste.
