Bon Iver's SABLE, fABLE is about two weeks away, and Justin Vernon is out on the promo trail. He's a guest on the new episode of the New York Times Popcast going in-depth on the album and the emotional experience behind it.
As heard on advance singles, SABLE, fABLE marks a warmer, more joyous turn for Bon Iver. It's a sound NYT critic Jon Caramanica described as "sensual." Vernon concurred, summing up the album's ethos as, "We don't got much time to live, let's be sexy." The change in approach had to do with Vernon letting go of depression and what he calls "sickness" that he felt was necessary to maintain the Bon Iver persona. Describing the expansion of the band's sound to arena scale, he noted, "It really was like I was hiding in there because I wasn't well." He said at one point he had an epiphany that he couldn't keep operating the way he was: "You get enough adrenaline up on the stage, but really, when you're that tired for so many years it just eats away at you."
Vernon spoke about Leslie Feist teaching him to deal with his anxiety about things like going out in the crowd at Coachella: "She's like, burst the bubble. You're just a person, so act like one, and they'll treat you like one." He also talked about going to LA more often to walk around and feel anonymous, a process that has led to making "a new friend for the first time in 15 years that I didn't meet backstage at one of my shows or in the studio."
SABLE, fABLE begins with last year's SABLE, EP, which marks what Vernon calls a final dose of the old Bon Iver: "It was almost like a cartoon of sad Bon Iver music. I liked the songs a lot, and they were kind of like these last moments of, like, the last gasping breath of my former self that really did feel bad for himself."
Vernon also discussed the appearances by Dijon and Mk.gee on the new album. Dijon previously opened for Bon Iver when Mk.gee was touring as his guitarist, an experience that was eye-opening for Vernon:
That was the first time where I was actually, like, really, really, really humbled. Like, I always enjoyed the people we went on tour with, but I was like, "Oh, this is fresh." What they were doing, it reignited something. It really had me second-guessing — not second-guessing. I love what we did. But it was like, "Oh. We're just about dinosaur. We're just about over our own hill."
There's much more to the interview, so watch the whole thing below.
