Album Review: Volcano Choir- Repave




It seems like Justin Vernon is willing to do anything if it will get him out of making another Bon Iver record. I mean, he was quoted saying this last year—“ I look at it like a faucet. I have to turn it off and walk away from it because so much of how that music comes together is subconscious or discovering. There’s so much attention on the band, it can be distracting at times. I really feel the need to walk away from it while I still care about it. And then if I come back to it – if at all – I'll feel better about it and be renewed or something to do that.

Of course his label went into spin mode and said he just meant they were taking time away after spending two years writing, recording, and touring in support of Vernon’s commercial breakthrough Bon Iver, Bon Iver.

In the wake of this, he’s gone on to record with a band he formed seven years ago, The Shouting Matches—a bluesy bar-rock outfit that drew little to no attention when they dropped the LP Grownass Man earlier this year. Now Vernon has resurrected another seemingly one-off project: the “experimental” band he formed four years ago with the members of the post-rock group Collections of Colonies of Bees. In 2009, they released Unmap, a mostly forgettable effort, save for the catchy and bizarre lead single, “Island, IS.”

Volcano Choir has returned with their second full length—Repave. And whereas Unmap was uneven at best, with many of the songs coming off as rough sketches or unfinished ideas, Repave is pretty much a Bon Iver record. It’s huge and expensive sounding. The sheer magnitude of it is very reminiscent of my first listen of the aforementioned Bon Iver, Bon Iver—although now, arriving two years later, it comes off as slightly less impressive.

The reason that Bon Iver was such a shock to hear was how far Vernon had come—in popularity, as well as a songwriter—in a four year period of time. Self-released in 2007, reissued by Jagjaguwar the following year, the story behind For Emma, Forever Ago is that of legend by now—recorded in a remote hunting cabin in Wisconsin, during the winter following Vernon’s band breaking up, as well as a split with a girlfriend. Its lo-fi, sparse arrangements and raw sound made it an honest and original record.

2008 was when Vernon’s stock began to rise—venues got larger, the Volcano Choir side project, his involvement in the Minneapolis lite-FM homage act GAYNGS, the Kanye West cosign in 2010, and then of course, the 2011 release of Bon Iver, Bon Iver, and all of the success that followed.

By now, something this huge in sound is just what we've come to expect from Vernon. And it maybe shows that this is how he’s writing material now. Brushing this off as being no different from Bon Iver is a dangerous argument however, and one could draw parallels between what the difference is in Thom Yorke’s day job in Radiohead, and his current stint in the “don't call us a supergroup” outfit Atoms For Peace.

Although I strongly argue that there is a big different between those two. And maybe some impassioned Justin Vernon fanboy will correct me and point out all the subtle differences between Volcano Choir and the current incarnation of Bon Iver, but after playing Repave many times through, I couldn't tell them apart.

Out of the nine tracks on Repave, some of them are just SO triumphant and grand, they run the risk of all sounding exactly the same. In fact, the first four songs are relatively interchangeable with one another, as far as their overall vibe—quiet moments that build and eventually explode into loud moments, shouty refrains, falsetto, “experimental” guitar noodling, one word song titles, etc.

And really, all eight songs on Repave—there’s really nothing special about any of them; nothing to distinguish one from the other. It’s pretty much 40 minutes of the same thing. Occasionally something you'll hear a rise in the sound and you'll perk up, but then it goes away, and it’s all too easy to check out completely and let this become background music. The problem with Repave is that I know that it’s just not the kind of record I’m going to come back to.

(J.V, just kicking back and phoning in most of this album)


I think I also may have that problem with Vernon’s work as Bon Iver. I don't remember the last time I threw on For Emma, Forever Ago, but I recently played the first side to Bon Iver—the first five songs making a run that’s nearly untouchable. It’s the flip side that gets a little boring and self-indulgent. I did this an as experiment to see if it would hold my interest, while I was still grappling with this Volcano Choir record. For the most part it did, but after “Michicant” finished up, I thought “well, that was fun,” and then I removed it from my turntable.

I started writing this piece a few weeks ago, listening to the album over and over again, waiting for it to “click,” if you will, or at least trying to make myself like it more, or attempting to look for something I missed in the previous listen.

In that time, “Comrade,” the album’s third track, has been released as a single, and from up on high, was bestowed with the honor of “Best New Music” from purveyors of all things cool, Pitchfork. A very talented PK staff writer named Ian Cohen must have been looking over my shoulder prior to writing his brief review of the song—

Whether he was tossing back some brewskis with the Shouting Matches, in it during the Yeezus sessions, trading notes with Alicia Keys, or working with Kathleen Edwards, Justin Vernon has worked very hard to prove he's having too much fun with his friends to work on a third Bon Iver album, and the new Volcano Choir album, Repave (out September 3 in the U.S. and September 2 internationally via Jagjaguwar), drives that point home.

He then goes on to say little about the song, or why it’s the “BEST” new music—the expression “arena-ready” is used, however. So take that however you want to.

I find myself saying this a lot around here, but Repave is certainly not a bad record. You can tell that Vernon and company spent a lot of time working on it. I'm uncertain what it is, but there’s something preventing me from connecting with this album in any way, other than at a very surface level. You want to root for it—specifically the first half: “Tiderays,” “Acetate,” “Comrade,” and “Byegone.” Each of them written to have an anthemic feel to them, each one growing larger in scale than the former.  Then you’ve got the unabashed earnestness of “Dancepak” and “Keel,” where Vernon is singing his motherfucking heart out, and finally the album’s closing track, “Almanac,” where all of the elements from the seven prior songs come together and then crash down upon you.

None of these are bad songs; they are just very middle of the road to me, and really, are just unoriginal. Many of them sound like the kind of thing you might you will hear on NPR, or on 89.3 The Current—Vernon, possibly inadvertently, primarily catering to his demographic of the white middle class, with an average age of around 35.

I think part of the problem that is keeping me from liking this album is how impersonal the lyrics can be. I guess if you were looking for one true difference between Vernon’s work with Volcano Choir and with Bon Iver—lyrics would be it. The lyrics in Bon Iver material are incredibly personal—the phrase from “Holocene,” “I was not magnificent,” comes to mind.

In contrast, the lyrics to Volcano Choir material are nonsensical at times, and just seem to take a backseat to making the song sound as big as possible—like on “Bygones,”—where Vernon drops “sexing up your Parliaments.” What the fuck does that even mean? Like are we talking about George Clinton? Are we talking about the British political system? Are we talking about the cigarettes with the recessed filter?

In the end, Repave comes off as the kind of record for the fans Vernon gained in a post-2011 world—number two album in the country, Grammy gold, sold out shows, custom sneakers, whiskey endorsement deals, etc. It’s a record that won't necessarily alienate people who have been following him since the early days, but it’s weighed down in enough excess that it may leave some listeners scratching their heads.


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