Last year, we reported that Justin Vernon—the beard and beanie behind the Bon Iver moniker—was up to… something. “Who else could embody the role of Bon Iver?” a curious website called “Counterpart” asked, along with some other Iver-ian questions like “Could the essence of a song lie outside the voice that first sang it?” and “If a song is a vessel, who else might fill it?” That website appears to have been taken down, presumably because the “audition” phase of the project has come and gone. It was captured in a brand new video for the SABLE, fABLEtrack “Day One,” featuring Dijon & Flock of Dimes. Both Dijon and Flock of Dimes’ Jenn Wasner appear as hopeful Bon Iver successors in the video, along with a few other candidates you may recognize.
Did you spot Cristin Milioti, Annie Clark (aka St. Vincent), or Jacob Elordi under that semi-convincing fake beard? Vernon himself makes an appearance near the end as well (he’s the one in the camo hat), meaning the announcement of his “retirement” at the beginning of the video may end up being as binding as Daniel Day-Lewis’ infamous pronouncement in 2017.
Bon Iver’s latest album, SABLE, fABLE, does grapple with Vernon’s complicated feelings about being in the spotlight. “I wasn’t well. I was overworked and overrun by anxiety,” Vernon recently told The New York Times of his years on the road. “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.” Now, however, “I think I love myself more,” he continued. “I’m finally just in this place where I’m like, I’m OK. Boohoo, I thought I’d have kids and a wife and that kind of love in my life. But I have my health, I have joy, I have love in my life everywhere I look. And I finally have gratitude and time for it. I’m definitely getting there.”
