Finding Death and Resurrection in Bon Iver’s SABLE, fABLE

There are a handful of bands that have legmakers in my life, throwing music as I grew up and changed. One of those artists is Bon Iiver, and its launch more recently, Saber, fable” It is another part of that trip.

Those who have followed Justin Vernon’s independent group know that Bon Iver’s vibrations tend to be on the saddest side. Vernon’s lyrics are often cryptic but deeply evocative. The substance of Bon Iiver’s music is felt and experienced more than understood. The movement of the acoustic clues stripped of For Emma, ​​forever to the exuberant and complete sound of the homonymous album for the most electronic 22, one million and I, me Everyone manages to convey this depth of moving emotion regardless of their kind.

I will admit that I am partial of the previous ioraciones of Bon Iiver, so I fell in love with the Saber EP when it comes out last October. The color mentioned in the EP title is close to black, and its launch in autumn, with leaves that fall and signs of the decomposition of the year, was fortuitous. When commenting on this EP in an interview, Vernon said:

Saber is this dark black color and almost began to become a cartoon of sad music by Bon Iiver. I really like the songs, but they were the last moments of children or thesis, the last ping gas of my former self that really felt bad for himself. This feels like a return, but an update, so I thought, hey, for all people who just want to stay sad, this is for you.

To Vernon, the dark and beautiful songs in Saber They were a kind of death, the “last jaded breath” or his former self. Vernon then describes his musical contributions in religious terms. Conversations about the toll that such vulnerability and raw meditation on the anguish of existence has tasks about it. Then, to say: “If there is a gift that I have, it seems to be bringing this sensation of the Church for people. And I love nothing but try to give that spirit to people, it is the environment of the Church outside or doctrine.

I could not help playing the three songs that make up the EP on. I was especially attracted to the “Speyside” track, in which Vernon sings:

It serves to suffer, make a hole in my foot
And I hope you look
While filing my book
Oh, what a wood waste
Nothing has happened as I thought I would do it

The song is introspective, complaining and dyed of repentance and frustration. It is not so much a criticism of the world as it is as much as a complaint about the true tragedy that we find as human beings. Vernon does not sing that “nothing has really happened as I thought it should”, but “how I thought I would do it. “Vernon was not trying to force a result, but never, however, life has been sufficient disappointment.

“Bon Iver” comes from the French for “good winter” and talks about the cold and insulating complaint that led to Vernon while writing For Emma, ​​forever. I have not listened to Vernon to mention it, but I am surprised by the meaning of the French word saberwhich can be translated as “sand.” That is precisely what thesis songs remember, changing and notoriously difficult to hold in their hands before it escapes. Or, to take another image, or the sand siphon through the middle of a sand watch, a reminder that life is fleeting, that for us mortals the “few days of [our] Vain life … [pass] As a shadow ”(Ecclesiastes 6:12).

In addition to the brevity and uncertainty of our lives, we put ourselves on our way and go to ourselves. In “Speyside”, Vernon Croons:

Yes, what happens to me?
Man, I’m very sorry
I have my best

There is something confessional about these first clues in Saber, fable. By “confessional”, I do not mean that you will simply be sharing about your life, but this is an admission of guilt, a kind of defense. These clues are a reflection of some of Vernon’s personal struggles. In his New York Times Interview, says “That’s the ‘saber’:” remain in the dark, young. “And that is not a way of living. Here, Vernon has hopes.

Darkness is not a way of living. But love is. And what Bon Iiver does with this album is to change from nihilism to the statement that life is really good, that there is love, joy and hope. The album’s turn comes in the song “Short Story”, accompanied by Kacy Hill, Vernon sings “that January is not the entire world”, a reminder that after winter comes spring, that the new life can arise even for sadness and death. When the track ends, Vernon sings:

The first thing is to be seen
The time heals, and then repeats
You will never be complete
And tension and thirst are sweet
You haven’t been too deep yet

These lines celebrate life as it comes. It is not perfect (“you will never be complete”) and yet “tension and thirst are sweet.” Living even the sometimes problematic lives we have is good. Being alive is good. There is sweetness to celebrate.

Immediately following the “short story” is the wonderful “Everything is peaceful love”, with a choir that sounds “every little thing is love and correct with me.” The rest of the lyrics of the song are certainly more ambivalent, but the sensation of the album from here on is mop and hopeful, even if it is not always lyrically obvious. Brezy and Hopeful is not GLIB, think, and looks in Vernon’s voice, a continuous search, just when he decidedly decided the darkness of the first tracks of the album.

Upon listening to Vernon to talk about his last album, I have the feeling that more than one place from Wholens established than anything else he has written to date. I wonder if that is a case of Ingon that says more than he knows. He is not a Christian, but as a priest who has just traveled through Lent, Holy Week and in Easrtide, I cannot avoid noticing Christian resonances on the journey of this album. Is it in some way a reflection of the death of suffering of Christ and being raised to a new life?

There are truths that I want to see you knew: that Christ really has died, risen and will rise again. That every little thing is love, but just because it was spoken by the existence by the God who is love. Just without stopping the thesis truths (for what I can say), I suspect that the reverberations of the great thing that God has done in Christ can feel and refract Saber, fable.