Recap Bon Iver at the Orpheum Theatre

In anticipation of Bon Iver’s sold-out show at the Orpheum Saturday, this had to be one of the big moments to which many were looking forward. Only Justin Vernon and an electric guitar, freezing the entire house in place with an ideal rendition of the pretty perfect “Re: Stacks.” Save for one woman who summoned the strength to yell out, “You’re so talented,” the crowd was unflinchingly locked in on the Eau Claire native it had come to see.

But the message with which he prefaced that song, off 2007’s For Emma, Forever Ago, matched the tone for the majority of the band’s sparkling, thunderous set: Bon Iver is a thing. And Vernon had lots of help, from the soundboards to the eight-piece band that accompanied him, in bringing Bon Iver songs to life.

That huge band—which included longtime bandmate Sean Carey and another drummer bashing away, Colin Stetson wrangling a saxophone the size of a motorcycle, Madison native Mike Noyce, and many more—didn’t wait long to show what it could do. With almost no introduction, the entire gang uncorked a theater-shaking version of “Perth,” off this year’s amazing Bon Iver, and kept the level of intensity up as it made its way through the stunning “Holocene.” It was a good, if expected, move to open the show with the first songs off the newest album, and it made it even more surprising when the dynamic version of “Creature Fear” that followed veered off into a quick, free-form, psychedelic jam while the lights hit like Willy Wonka’s freaked-out boat ride.

Though the quiet songs paid off with big goose bumps, particularly “Flume,” it was the big participatory numbers that really stood out. Closing out the show with “The Wolves (Act I And II),” Vernon invited the entire crowd to sing the refrain, “What might have been lost,” and to scream at the top of its lungs to close out the song. And when he reemerged for the encore, he had his entire band encircle him and a “super fucking old” steel guitar so they could sing back up on “Skinny Love.”

The man vs. sadness/mononucleosis in The Middle Of Nowhere, Wisconsin origin story of Bon Iver probably still turns people onto the band. But the huge leap forward Vernon and his collaborators took on the new album, coupled with a forceful and fully realized vision of those songs on stage, should keep the listeners around to see how far this “thing” can take it.