“Justin Vernon took several chances with Bon Iver, but the biggest one was that he managed to make sounds 25 years out of style sound cool...”
“Bon Iver might be the record that frees Bon Iver from the myth of Bon Iver: from the endlessly repeated creation saga (cabin, heartbreak, Wisconsin), from the detailed evocations of his beard, from the loaded allusions to his partnership with Kanye West. Bon Iver opens with six long seconds of silence, a clearing...”
“This summer, when All Songs Considered asked listeners to vote for their favorite albums of the year so far, there were a handful of shoo-ins. Instantly beloved releases by Bon Iver, Adele, Fleet Foxes, the Decemberists and others all made a predictably strong showing...”
“This year, we couldn't sit still...”
“Just as summer 2011 was heating up, Wisconsin folk outfit Bon Iver returned with a sophomore album perfect for those chillier autumnal nights...”
“I had never knowingly heard a Bon Iver song until this past summer ... One night in July, I found myself transfixed by an unfamiliar falsetto streaming from the speakers of my rental car, faltering and fumbling, a mirror of my own emotions...”
“There are two types of musicians: those that play what people want to hear, and those that play what they hear themselves. 2011 proved Justin Vernon to be the ringleader of that second group...”
“For as often as Justin Vernon's cabin hibernation is parodied, doesn't it sound just a little enticing?”
“The cathedral-folk sound is idyllic, the memories of an ex are terrifying...”
“The second album from Wisconsin's Justin Vernon thrives in an unlikely sweet spot between Nick Drake and Peter Cetera...”
“If Bon Iver's follow-up to For Emma, Forever Ago wasn't polarizing before it received four Grammy nominates - and it kind of was - it sure is polarizing now...”
“In the years since Bon Iver's debut album, For Emma, Forever Ago, countless singer-songwriters have tried to recreate that album's wistful, wintery feel...”
“Last week, Bon Iver was nominated for four Grammy awards...”
“2011 was the year music learned to float. Actually, that’s not true at all...”
“Ett av årets bästa band har gjort ett av årets bästa album, och även en av årets bästa spelningar...”
“Anyone only passingly familiar with the phenomenon that is Bon Iver would be forgiven for imagining their shows to be staid affairs; all polite shushing and warm smatterings of applause...”
“The encore alone was worthy of its own show as Bon Iver harmonised with a sold-out crowd...”
“The encore alone was worthy of its own show as Bon Iver harmonised with a sold-out crowd...”
“Q Magazine held its annual Q Awards ceremony in London today, and plenty of big-name acts did well for themselves...Bon Iver’s self-titled album won the Q Award for Best Album...”
“Bedridden in a remote Wisconsin cabin, Justin Vernon was taking refuge from the world of music when he captured a set of songs on some basic recording equipment. The band Bon Iver was born...”
“This is pretty exciting,' says Justin Vernon, aka Bon Iver, with considerable understatement. Only four years ago, the 30-year-old from Wisconsin had no band, no relationship and was holed up in a log cabin pouring everything into his For Emma, Forever Ago, a debut LP of desolate, beautiful indie folk...”
“You can't help but assume that Justin Vernon is Wisconsin’s most celebrated son. The small-town boy has come a long way from the submissive all-or-nothing heartbreak that informed his 2008 debut For Emma, Forever Ago...”
“'Amazing,' 'awe-inspiring,' 'insanely good,' 'godlike'… For many fans, it was barely hyperbole to deify Justin Vernon of Bon Iver after their show in Seattle on Monday night...”
“So much for that whole lonely-guy-in-the-woods thing....”
“The crowd at Milwaukee's Riverside Theater is bursting. It's been two years since Bon Iver has performed live—at the very same venue, back in September of 2009—and a feverish anticipation is flooding the sold-out room...”
“Back in June, The Awl compiled a long list of the adjectives (and a few adverbs) used by music journalists to describe the new self-titled Bon Iver album...”
“The now nine-member collective known as Bon Iver has certainly evolved from its oft-retold cabin origins...”
“Bon Iver played Brooklyn's Prospect Park last night, and our photographer Erez Avissar was on the scene...”
“It was hot at the United Palace Theater in Washington Heights on Tuesday — full house, no air-conditioning — but the audience was animated and grateful, ready to thank Justin Vernon...”
“It takes a special breed of artist to twist those words, which are already fraught with melancholy and longing, into a thunderous battle cry...”
“Often songwriters fall into two camps. The first, narrative songwriters, generally tell stories linearly with great images...”
“At the risk of sounding like the 21st-century equivalent of the guy who booed Dylan at Newport for going electric...”
“Many, though certainly not all, musicians of most genres dream of composing, crafting, birthing a hit record...”
“In his short career, Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon has starred in a number of impressive, unique roles...”
“The love for Justin Vernon and Bon Iver at Washington, D.C.'s 9:30 Club was so overwhelming for this performance, it seemed fans might storm the stage and eat the humble frontman alive...”
“A Bon Iver concert doesn’t deign to fans who pound their fists against the air or pull out their lighters in a show of solidarity...”
“It's nearly 4 a.m. in the Milwaukee casino Potawatomi, and the roulette wheel isn't cooperating...”
“There are a couple of great things about Bon Iver, but probably only one of them explains how the band sold out the Chicago Theatre Sunday night...”
“To quote the Curtis Mayfield-penned slow jam that slinked out of the P.A. right before he took the stage, Justin Vernon of Bon Iver was determined to give the audience something it could feel...”
“Bon Iver's Justin Vernon has flummoxed the music industry over the past few years...”
“Far from the fortress of solitude where Justin Vernon recorded his debut album, For Emma, Forever Ago, Bon Iver’s follow-up does what follow-ups should: it evolves...”
“This week on the Billboard 200 albums chart, Jill Scott and Bon Iver arrived at Nos. 1 and 2, respectively, with their "The Light of the Sun" and self-titled sets...”
“Maybe Justin Vernon used his nom de project, Bon Iver, as the title of his new album because “Deep Thoughts” would have sounded too much like an old “Saturday Night Live” bit...”
“Justin Vernon, the man behind Bon Iver, sits down with Jian to talk about his acclaimed new album Bon Iver, his diverse musical influences, and his unlikely rise to fame...”
“It's been three years since For Emma, Forever Ago, the debut album that landed Justin Vernon's band Bon Iver on virtually every best-of list for 2008...”
“Justin Vernon's second album follows the serenely beautiful For Emma, Forever Ago, the lauded 2008 debut that led to soundtrack placements and collaborations with Kanye West...”
“Justin Vernon's second album follows the serenely beautiful For Emma, Forever Ago, the lauded 2008 debut that led to soundtrack placements and collaborations with Kanye West...”
“To many Bon Iver fans, Justin Vernon will always be the plaid-clad mountain-man sensitivo stranded in wintry isolation in the Wisconsin wilderness...”
“The best album of our halfway-over year proves that rock-and-roll isn’t dead — it’s only sleeping. And dreaming...”
“With the 2007 release of Bon Iver's breakthrough album For Emma, Forever Ago, the outfit's sole proprietor, Justin Vernon, created one of the most romanticized folktales in recent music history...”
“Not since a creek drank a cradle in 2002 had anyone so quietly overtaken the indie-music community as Justin Vernon did in 2008 with Bon Iver’s For Emma, Forever Ago...”
“The guy who recorded an album alone in the woods. This line might end up on Justin Vernon's tombstone...”
“Could it be that a bearded backwoods falsetto-singing man named Justin Vernon is the great unifier of this early decade...”
“Every band has a story, but in the case of Bon Iver, it's all but impossible to distinguish the notes from the narrative...”
“Resting on the floor in a corner of Justin Vernon's home studio, safe from foot traffic, is a collage of Polaroid portraits pinned to cork. Dozens of smiles fan out across the two-by-four bulletin board...”
“The music of Justin Vernon offers exhilarating evidence that the rural really are different, and not in the pickup-drivin’, flag-fetishizin’ way that sells in Nashville...”
“Beth/Rest,' the closing song on Bon Iver, is an absolutely diabolical bit of provocation. A plodding tangle of electric keyboards and guitar solos...”
“Spring has come late to Eau Claire this year, and the cherry blossom trees that line the driveway to Justin Vernon's home are only now coming into bloom; leaves spreading...”
“Even by Kanye West standards, the Bowery Ballroom show last November was a spectacle. West had chosen the tiny club for a surprise concert...”
“Justin Vernon's life could be the most implausible reality-TV show ever. Five years ago, he split from his beardy prog-folk band, DeYarmond Edison, and moved to a hunting cabin in Wisconsin...”
“Four winters ago, Justin Vernon retreated to his father's secluded cabin in northern Wisconsin, purging his sorrow through a falsetto...”
“From those three months alone in a Wisconsin cabin to sharing a stage with collaborator Kanye West, Justin Vernon’s traveled far on the back of his angelic falsetto...”
