The music Justin Vernon creates as Bon Iver leaves itself wide open to interpretation, comically so at times. But almost no one interprets it as “fun.” Now consider Wisconsin experimental post-rock outfits Collections of Colonies of Bees and All Tiny Creatures and the fact that “experimental post-rock” never promises a load of laughs either. These are the parties that comprise Volcano Choir and on their second LP Repave, the sextet have created a grandiose record with arena-rock ambitions and ostentatious beauty that is mostly inscrutable on a lyrical level. And yet, here’s the way in: I think this is the sound of them having fun.
This may sound counterintuitive, but it was also the key to unlocking their 2009 debut Unmap. Lyrics such as “conserve it with an omelette/ and you’re on it with the carpet” from “Island, IS” would’ve been a dead giveaway if you could make them out in the slightest. But while all those beatless, free-time mbira excursions could have been interpreted as experimental artists indulging their least accessible ideas, let’s not forget that thumb pianos are really fun to play when you’re stoned.
Repave is a decidedly more extroverted affair-- “with enough kief/ you can really bore someone” is the most straightforward and sound advice you’ll get from Vernon, though he sings it with chesty zeal on “Byegone” like it’s a regal proclamation. Volcano Choir are less interested in getting high this time out as they are achieving spiritual uplift, or at least getting a rise out of the listener-- if you still are doubting the sincerity of Bon Iver’s Hornsby tribute “Beth/Rest”, Repave establishes that some things will never change with Vernon.
The near entirety of it could be described as “power balladry,” a comprehensive denomination that owes plenty to the 1980s’ most popular Bruces, but also those that stood at their periphery and the bands that would ultimately carry their lineage. Overdriven organ, booming drums, and Vernon’s multitracked falsetto push opener “Tiderays” to an elevated plane where post-prog Genesis and pre-Eno Coldplay meet. The magisterial orchestration of “Byegone” enrobes a grizzled folk tune; it’s a place where early Pearl Jam and Arcade Fire find common ground in their ability to reconcile the supposed incongruity of humility and bluster within a cohesive aesthetic. Those bands tended to make songs with “sea” or “ocean” in their title and you don’t need that damn album cover for Volcano Choir to drive the point home. All songs on Repave begin quietly and almost none stay that way for long, so when those crescendos hit, you’re supposed to envision waves crashing on cold, barren outcroppings, white mist spraying as seabirds take majestic flight.
That’s really what “power ballad” means on a literal level-- an intimate song blown out to widescreen proportions to the point where you have to call it epic and it can be shared with thousands of people who all think it was written for them. It’s worth acknowledging the mutual benefit that gets passed on to CoCoB and ATC here: let’s not forget, for all the ill will directed towards any of the influences here, their records were often the outcome of the most technically proficient musicians on earth given frightening sums of money and unlimited studio time with the express purpose of making "it sounds like a million bucks" feel tangible.
And the instrumental contingent of Volcano Choir gets to live out their hockey shed visions by isolating the most bombastic sections of Bon Iver albums and making entire songs out of them. They still fill out the margins playing tricky, off-kilter guitar lines that wouldn’t be out of place in their own work. Here, they’re polished, shellacked, and gilded to the point where you couldn’t imagine Vernon picking up one of their guitars and strumming out “Skinny Love”-- they sound more like harps. The depth of the drums evoke not just canyons and churches, but the Grand Canyon and Sistine Chapel. In short, Repave sounds amazing, almost intimidating in its clarity, so even when “Keel” and "Almanac" start to integrate the more free-form and abrasive sounds of Unmap towards the end, you’re more likely to hear the spirituals of later Talk Talk than anything truly confrontational.
Still, they never overpower Vernon, who focuses solely on his vocals here and anthologizes every mode he’s been in for the past half decade. His most quoted line by now is “I was not magnificent,” and Repave answers “like hell I wasn’t.” A couple of my colleagues noted the influence of Bruce Springsteen on this record, and while I concur, it’s more of a visual than a sound. On late-album lighter-waver “Alaskans”, you can sense a perspirant Vernon two hours into a cathartic, marathon show, toweling himself down, sitting at a piano bench. There’s a performative edge that might seem out of place in Bon Iver-- even though the band’s personnel exploded to over a dozen, you still have the expectation that Vernon’s singing his pain up there. As he explained to Ryan Dombal, Volcano Choir doesn’t just sound romantic or like make-out music, it’s distinctly sexual. When he sings "We're talkin’ real love” in a seductive lower register on “Alaskans”, it’s like the drums were removed so you can hear the adulation of the crowd in your mind. Vernon howls “I won’t beg for you on acetate” and it’s a knowing, self-referential barb from a guy whose music often gets characterized as doing just the opposite.
What Volcano Choir get out of this is the ability to indulge in extravagant power balladry without taking on the seemingly requisite overblown persona where all this heavy lifting is necessary when you're carrying the weight of the world. But just as often, the subtle levity gets a little too heightened. Had Vernon done away with lyrics completely and gone Wisconsin Hopelandic on us, Repave might be worthy of being called the third Bon Iver album, which it sorta is-- the majestic choruses of “Tiderays” and “Comrade” are way more in line with Bon Iver’s “Perth” or “Calgary” than anything on Unmap. But too often, Vernon’s lyrics range from puzzling to utterly too goofy to ignore, creating a discomfiting dissonance with the stone cold sobriety of the music.
Authenticity is always something of a bugaboo outside of Vernon’s main gig-- you use For Emma, Forever Ago and Bon Iver as standards and everything’s going to sound potentially insincere by comparison. Usually, skepticism is succesfully met head on-- the louche and lewd nature of Gayngs assured that while they weren’t winking, they were definitely leering. As far as the blue-collar, cheesehead rawk of Shouting Matches, the whole point is to remind you that Vernon is a Wisconsinite from Eau Claire, not just a dude who happened upon a cabin there. For all I know, Vernon might be entering his Ghostface Killah ca. Supreme Clientele phase-- simply toying with words for maximum surrealistic value. But while Repave's sounds trigger skygazing, googly-eyed emotion, lines like "tossin' off your compliments, wow/ sexin' all your Parliaments" and "that Ticonderoga shit/ made my mind and my heart/ all split up over/ the floor of the jackpot" can make you immediately question how much you should trust them.
Vernon explained Repave's carnality as damn near necessary in the indie rock discussion: "It's been built up so hard and so high that people are afraid...I'm talking about how what happens between people is so misunderstood even between the people who are having sex. Maybe some of the lyrics on this record are my way of cracking the egg." It's a noble cause, but indicative of the obfuscation and loopiness that undermines Repave; he uses a mixed metaphor to describe what might happen if people discuss the emotions that result from a physical act. But in the way its tremendously seductive and overwhelming overtures can be jeopardized by one embarrassing line or wrong move, Repave does become a realistically sexualized record. Just not exactly in the way it intended.
