Culture Pick | A tale of two discs: Bon Iver’s ‘SABLE, fABLE’ dissects melancholy and melody

Bon Iver: SABLE, fABLE - Spectrum Culture

Once upon a time, folk rock was the Great Indie Hope. Between The Decemberists, Bon Iver and Fleet Foxes, a new wave of folkies garnered accolades and Grammys. Bon Iver, particularly, won both Best New Artist and Best Alternative Album for Bon Iver, prompting the hilarious viral Grammy tweet “Who the hell is Bonny Bear?” After 2012, though, the movement came to nothing. The Decemberists backed away from the high-flying prog they’d come to succes…

Album Review: Bon Iver – SABLE, fABLE

It feels like a lifetime ago that Justin Vernon sequestered to his father’s rural Wisconsin cabin to make Bon Iver’s debut album, the seminal For Emma, Forever Ago. That album is a testament to Vernon’s near-unmatched ability to make devastating folk songs that sound like nothing else and established the project as an indie folk mainstay. It would have been easy for Vernon to coast on that sound for years, but with each subsequent release, he ma…

Culture Pick | A tale of two discs: Bon Iver’s ‘SABLE, fABLE’ dissects melancholy and melody

When Justin Vernon, famously known as Bon Iver, burst onto the indie music scene in 2007 with his debut album, “For Emma, Forever Ago,” a wave of influence followed him. Each song of this emotionally coherent tracklist was sonically crafted to mirror the human vulnerability of heartbreak, harmonizing raw falsettos, acoustic melodies and ambient landscapes...