Justin Vernon walked into April Base Studios in the summer of 2010 with a plan that would have seemed almost reckless given what he had to lose. His debut, "For Emma, Forever Ago," had made him the kind of artist people described in hushed tones, a guy who recorded alone in a Wisconsin cabin and somehow produced something that felt like a private letter everyone had read. The obvious move was to do it again. He did not do it again.
Released on June 17, 2011, "Bon Iver, Bon Iver" is the record Vernon made when he decided that being a band actually meant something. Produced entirely by Vernon himself, it was recorded at April Base Studios, a remodeled veterinary clinic in Fall Creek, Wisconsin, that he and his brother had converted into a studio in 2008. The building sat over a defunct swimming pool. The album that came out of it sounds, in some ways, like it was built on similarly unusual foundations: folk music that keeps finding new rooms to open.
The ten tracks on the album each carry the name of a place. "Perth" opens the record, and Vernon described it as a "Civil War-sounding heavy metal song," which is either a joke or a precise description depending on how you hear it. "Minnesota, WI" follows, built on finger-picked guitars, double bass drums, and what Vernon called "distorted bass saxophone." The closer, "Beth/Rest," is horn-heavy and unabashedly lush, a kind of 1980s ballad that Vernon said he was most proud of. The geography is not decorative. Vernon has said that each song is meant to suggest that places are times and people are places, a logic that sounds circular until you sit with the music and realize it actually holds.
What made the album possible, practically speaking, was the cast Vernon assembled. He brought in Colin Stetson, whose bass saxophone appears on the opening track and threads through much of the record, providing a low-end presence that is more felt than heard on first listen. Greg Leisz, the pedal steel guitarist whose credits run from Lucinda Williams to Bill Frisell, plays on five tracks. Rob Moose, who had worked with Antony and the Johnsons and The National, contributed violin and viola. C.J. Camerieri, known for his work with Rufjan Stevens and Rufus Wainwright, handled French horn and trumpet. Mike Lewis played alto, tenor, and soprano saxophone across most of the album. Sean Carey, Matt McCaughan, and Mike Noyce, the core of the live band, contributed throughout. Jim Schoenecker and Tom Wincek of Volcano Choir provided granular synthesis and processing on several tracks.
Vernon described his intention plainly: "I brought in a lot of people to change my voice, not my singing voice, but my role as the author of this band, this project. I built the record myself, but I allowed those people to come in and change the scene." That distinction matters. The album is not a collaboration in the sense of shared authorship. Vernon produced every track. But the sound is genuinely collective in a way "For Emma" never was, and the difference is audible in the first thirty seconds of "Perth."
The two singles the album generated were "Calgary," the eighth track, and "Holocene," the third. "Calgary" was the first released, backed by a cover of Bonnie Raitt's "I Can't Make You Love Me." "Holocene" followed, with a B-side cover of Peter Gabriel's "Come Talk to Me." The "Holocene" video, directed by Nabil Elderkin and filmed in Iceland, became one of the more quietly stunning music videos of that year, the kind of thing people sent to each other without much explanation. The song itself earned Grammy nominations for both Song of the Year and Record of the Year, which is a strange thing to happen to a track that is essentially about feeling small.
The album debuted at number two on the US Billboard 200, selling 104,000 copies in its first week. It reached number one on both the Norwegian and Danish Albums Charts, and number four in the UK. Pitchfork and Paste each named it their top album of 2011. Stereogum placed it third. Rolling Stone put it at 21 on their year-end list. AllMusic gave it a mixed review, with critic Tim Sendra arguing that the additional instrumentation cluttered what had worked so well in its stripped-down predecessor. That dissent is worth noting, not because it is right, but because it identifies the real gamble Vernon was taking. He was trading intimacy for scale, and not everyone wanted to follow him there.
At the 2012 Grammy Awards, the album won Best Alternative Music Album. Bon Iver also won Best New Artist, which is a category that tends to feel slightly absurd when applied to someone who had already made one of the most talked-about records of the previous decade. The wins were real, though, and they confirmed something the critical reception had already suggested: this was not a record that had slipped through.
The album was characterized at the time as folk rock, indie rock, post-rock, and chamber pop, which is another way of saying that no single label fit comfortably. That resistance to category is part of what made it influential. The years after 2011 produced a wave of artists working in the space between acoustic folk and electronic texture, between intimate songwriting and orchestral ambition. The lineage is not always direct, but the room Vernon built on that record was one a lot of people moved into.
A 10th anniversary edition arrived on January 14, 2022, featuring sessions recorded by Vernon and Sean Carey at AIR Studios in October 2011. The physical release included an essay by Phoebe Bridgers, which is a small, telling detail: the person who wrote the liner notes for the anniversary edition of your second album is one of the artists who most clearly inherited the emotional register you established on it.
"Bon Iver, Bon Iver" is 39 minutes long. It does not overstay. The closing seconds of "Beth/Rest" fade out on synthesizer and pedal steel, and the record ends before it explains itself. That restraint, after everything the album has built, is the last and most characteristic thing about it.
