Bon Iver, Bon Iver: The lyrics

So much good music comes out every month it’s amazing.

A lot of bands let you stream their new albums for free, option to buy. Some even let you stream the album weeks before its official release without the option to buy immediately. Go figure.

The new Bon Iver album has been available for a while to stream but not to buy until later this month. Too bad because I wanted to buy it by the second song.

I’m tearing up, acrost your face
move dust through the light
to fide your name
it’s something fane
this is not a place
not yet awake, I’m raised of make

still alive who you love

Amazing and surprising. Different from the last album. Better. He’s in another place than you expect with the lyrics. And that makes the album better.

…and at once I knew I was not magnificent
high above the highway aisle
(jagged vacance, thick with ice)
I could see for miles, miles, miles

The lyrics hit me in a place that I’ll admit is probably not the same for others. Writing is everything to me. I love music, but it’s not my thing to make it. My brother is very good at music, maybe great. Music is powerful to people in ways that plain writing is not. But if the tune isn’t there, the lyrics don’t have a chance. So usually the less you’re trying to say with lyrics the better. It seems like that’s how lyrics are written. But not with this album.

our love is a star
sure some hazardry
for the light before and after most indefinitely
danger has been stole away

I’ve always thought that’s what writing should be. That if you write something and you turn it over and around and it’s at its best, adding music to it later would only make it better.

in a mother, out a moth
furling forests for the soft
gotta know been lead aloft
so I’m ridding all your stories
what I know, what it is, is pouring

I don’t want to look too much into the meaning of what he’s done. I think I read somewhere that he was more interested in the sounds of the words than the meanings. Not important. He’s in another place with this album, and the language looking back from there is foreign, surprising, beautiful.

Bon Iver, Bon Iver out 6/21 via Jagjaguwar.
Official lyrics thanks to Jagjaguwar.

Stream the album at NPR or Pitchfork.