Modern folk music often echoes the past. Looking at the words “modern” and “folk” side by side feels oppositional. We think of technology as being modern, but old instruments are a kind of technology, too. Justin Vernon, who records as Bon Iver, blends the old and new as well as anyone, as you’ll hear in his songs below.
Videos by American Songwriter
“Skinny Love” from ‘For Emma, Forever Ago’ (2007)
Vernon described the “skinny” part of love as weightless. It’s a relationship that’s conditional for one partner. He recorded the song using a resonator guitar, which amplifies its sound via metal cones. It sounds broken, like some abandoned instrument that hadn’t been played in years—old, rusted strings barely clinging to the tuning posts. It must have been how Vernon felt, isolated in a cabin, trying to find his way back from illness and despair. Trying to clean the rust. In tattered condition.
Come on, skinny love, just last the year,
Pour a little salt, we were never here.
“Holocene” from ‘Bon Iver, Bon Iver’ (2011)
“Holocene” brings to mind that moment just before a thaw. The ice remains thick, the air impossibly cold, but you’re not isolated. You share in the chill with someone, a friend, a partner. You walk outside, and the cold hits your lungs in a shocking and kind of healing way. Vernon and his brother had a smoke and went for a walk. The frigid night kept most people at home, giving the streets a quiet peace from the scattering lives that typically occupy them. He sings, “I could see for miles, miles, miles.” It’s a destination song. About Eau Claire and its people. But he needed the clarity of an empty road to see them, too.
“Exile” with Taylor Swift from ‘Folklore’ (2020)
If you want to make gorgeous cabin-in-the-woods folk, who better to call than Vernon? “Exile” follows two separate paths from a broken relationship. Over bitter piano chords, Vernon admits he can’t move on. But Taylor Swift has, which makes this even more heartbreaking. Another song about “place,” but a destination seen from the outside. He’s exiled from her world. From her. You get the sense that the aching encounter is a final attempt to keep her close. Chamber strings swell as their voices overlap with opposing views of the same relationship. Their voices pass, one over the other, like two people speaking at or past each other but never in conversation.
Photo by Shirlaine Forrest/WireImage
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