BON IVER | livemusic.fm

Livemusic was at the gig of the year last night. To be fair, labelling last night’s show at Hammersmith Apollo as a ‘gig’ is frankly disrespectful. The ‘gig of the year’ is also a fairly lofty tag to attach to any live show, so let me retrace my footsteps for a second…

What the Apollo audience saw last night was nothing short of a spectacle. A fireworks display, a NASA space shuttle launch, a dozen skyscrapers being demolished to dust in unison, the dawn of a new utopia.

When you are stood in a sold out Hammersmith Apollo and all you can see is people crying, cuddling and swaying with closed eyes and clenched fists at the utter magnificence of what they are witnessing, you know that you are a part of something special. We are talking an unfathomable love in. When the compulsion to grab complete randoms and hold them during the encore is almost overpowering, you know that you are involved in something special. The combination of Bon Iver’s show last night and a couple of disco biscuits would have resulted in porno on a MASSIVE scale.

By the time the ticket touts were heading back to Dagenham with wads of cash lining their filthy pockets after a stress-free and wholeheartedly lackadaisical innings outside of the Apollo, the venue was packed and bubbling in anticipation. Never has a hiatus between support artist (Kathleen Edwards) and a headline act been more painful, and I am not just talking about standing on my heavily blistered feet (a result of the 5-a-side football I played all Sunday afternoon) or the 12” subway sandwich that was haunting me for the first hour of shuffling for position.

So many gigs come and go in this fair city, thousands of them. Some shit, some fantastic. Every person lucky enough to be inside Hammersmith Apollo last night knew that if things went as planned, that they were in prime position to witness something utterly incredible.

Why? I hear you ask. What on earth is the big deal? Put simply, there is no other musician on the planet who plucks away at the heartstrings with greater artistry than Justin Vernon. He is a modern age superhero who, contrary to popular belief, is much, much more than just a big, burly guy with a high-pitched war chest at his disposal. Moreover, Justin Vernon has been the chief architect of two albums that define a particular state of mind that we should all want to be experience.

Now I feel like the perfect person to report on his show as this was my first time seeing Bon Iver live. I have studied the albums, watched appearances on Jools Holland etc etc and waited patiently for the opportunity to see them in the flesh. I am the best example of someone who didn’t know what to expect but knew EXACTLY what I was hoping for. Namely Justin Vernon sat on a stool, under a spotlight, serenading the audience as if he was playing an open mic night. 

However, as I look back through my messy mobile phone jottings, the word ‘EPIC’ has been used about fifteen times. Not a tag you would associate with a solo show. It's true that there were moments when all the other members of the nine-strong band took a back seat and allowed Justin Vernon to showcase his incredible talents as a solo artist (re:stacks), however, these were not the highlights of the show. Surprisingly, Bon Iver’s finest hour was when all nine-band members, who combined to play in excess of fifteen instruments in a plethora of different arrangements, rocked the fuck out.

Two moments stick in my mind. Firstly, the end of EP title track Blood Bank, which saw the entire band hammer their instruments into an epic (there’s that word again) frenzy, but also during the Mogwai-esque crescendo of stand-out track from the band’s eponymous second album Calgary, which Vernon described as…

“A song about believing in something so hard that it comes true.”

From the moment Bon Iver picked up their instruments, the adoration in the room was palpable. I fell in love. The crowd was so deeply embroiled that it actually became a little too much when invited to sing along to the ‘What might have been lost’ tagline that makes The Wolves (Act I and II) such a standout track on the band's first album. 

As a live outfit, the show represented a reinvention for Bon Iver. Having made his name as a man with a beautiful voice, and having produced one of the finest debut albums in the galaxy, last night was a clear sign that Justin Vernon treated his sophomore album as an opportunity to take the thatched cottage he had built and turn it into a skyscraper. Last night, there were clear signs that this reinvention had spread both forwards and backwards, as old classics (Flume, The Wolves) were reinvigorated with new strings, new drums and additional horns. 

This is what I found so utterly extraordinary about the show. For an artist with so many mind-numbingly lo-fi classics in his back pocket, the classics were actually re-constructed and improved upon, even though they should really be showcased by Justin Vernon’s voice and guitar alone. I thought this was an impossibility, in the same way that I thought recording an album better than 'For Emma, Forever Ago' was impossible.

Impossible doesn’t seem to be the kind of word you will find in Justin Vernon’s vocabulary.

Justin Vernon spoke to the audience on numerous occasions last night. He was relaxed and focussed. He didn't thank the audience for coming out with even a hint of bashfulness or arrogance; he didn’t expect anyone to be there to see him just because of his wonderfulness. Justin Vernon spoke to the audience with a level of gratitude that I have never witnessed before from a frontman. He thanked each and every one of the crowd for coming out as if it meant the world to him which, if you ask me, is just about as good as it gets.

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Pictures - James Nguyen