It’s been nearly four years since romantic miserable beardy fellows the world over took Bon Iver‘s album For Emma, Forever Ago to their aching hearts. Unsatisfying dribs and drabs about the much-anticipated follow-up have come out in recent times, but now finally there seem to be concrete details of a second album from Justin Vernon’s project.
Vernon tells all about the new album, set for release in June, in an interview with Rolling Stone. However, Vernon had a few problems finding the muse for new songs, saying, “Somewhere along the line, I forgot how to write songs. I couldn’t do it anymore with a guitar. It wasn’t happening.”
The answer was to crowd himself with other musicians, a far cry from the secluded Wisconsin wilderness in which he recorded his debut.
“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,” says Vernon. “I built the record myself, but I allowed those people to come in and change the scene.”
Some of those musicians include saxophonist Colin Stetson (Tom Waits, Arcade Fire) and pedal-steel player Greg Leisz (Linda Rondstadt).
The album is yet to be given a title, but the first track on the new LP will be called Perth, reportedly after some kind of epiphany Vernon experienced while in WA. He said the city’s name sounds like ‘birth’ but, rather strangely, “better because it doesn’t sound as ugly”.
“It’s a Civil War-sounding heavy metal song,” he adds. “It’s sort of chaotic, dense, jarring.”
Because civil war and heavy metal are the two things that jump into everyone’s head with the mention of ‘Perth’, of course.
