Once more into the Port-A-Potty-stocked breach, dear friends. For the 17th time in as many years, hordes of self-absorbed narcissists will descend upon Manchester, Tennessee, for a four-day weekend of music and debauchery—and the rest of us will pay good money to watch them perform.
Welcome back to AVQ&A, where we throw out a question for discussion among the staff and readers. Consider this a prompt to compare notes on your interface with pop culture, to reveal your embarrassing tastes and experiences, and to ponder how our diverse lives all led us to convene here together. Got a question you’d…
Bon Iver is no one’s—okay, maybe The A.V. Club’s—idea of a summer jam, but bandleader Justin Vernon is nevertheless going to bring his wintry mix of earnest indie songwriting to the sunny beaches of Mexico’s Riviera Maya when Bon Iver headlines the three-day “all-inclusive tropical concert vacation” known as Days Have…
Bon Iver songs are sort of a mood unto themselves, at once wistful and melancholy, digitized but organic. The second you hear Justin Vernon’s voice you feel something—not exactly a lump in the throat, but a sense of the cycle of life spinning wildly around you. It barely matters what he says, as evidenced by the…
The David Lynch Foundation has revealed who will be at its second Festival Of Disruption today, promising performances from Bon Iver in what is billed as a “rare Justin Vernon solo set,” and well as Sharon Van Etten and Reggie Watts. But perhaps even more intriguing for those that have been gobbling up the new…
Bon Iver has axed a series of concerts and an appearance on A Prairie Home Companion citing “personal reasons.” The announcement was made in a tweet, in which the band said: “Our deepest apologies to all our fans. We will be back.”
Self care is important—you know, eating something delicious, falling asleep, reading a damn book. Self care is intentionally doing whatever shit you want. One popular method of caring for the self is to fill a bath tub up with hot water, leave that hot water in the bath tub, and then sit in it for a long time and…
In Albums Of The Year, A.V. Club staffers write about a record that defined 2016 for us. Maybe it isn’t the year’s absolute best record—or even our No. 1 favorite—but it’s one that, without it, music would have been a whole lot less interesting.
Once upon a time, on the day of a big anticipated album release, you’d have to wake up early, fight your sister for possession of mom’s car keys, drive 35 minutes to the nearest mall, park near the south entrance close to where the Sam Goody was located, and then rush inside only to be told by an aloof college-aged…
Ten years ago, Justin Vernon wasn’t succeeding. Just before he made his first album as Bon Iver, For Emma, Forever Ago, he experienced the loss of multiple things—a band and a relationship among them, so the story goes—so he burrowed, regrouped, worked, and wrote songs, proving to himself that he was still whole…
New Yorkers—and those that will be in the New York area around December—now have the opportunity to get freaky and melancholy with Justin Vernon. Bon Iver announced five new dates on its Facebook page: Three are in Brooklyn, one is in Manhattan, and the other is in the suburb of Westchester. This slightly expands the…
Bon Iver just released its touring schedule for early 2017, dates that singer-songwriter Justin Vernon apparently trusted fans to understand without the need of a two-hour explanatory press conference. And you have to admit, that feels empowering. Anyway, it looks like the Wisconsin-based band will be spending much of…
We’re still a month out from the September 30 release of 22, A Million, the first Bon Iver studio album in more than five years. But the band’s singer/songwriter/sole permanent member, Justin Vernon, sat down with reporters yesterday to play them the album in its entirety, and talk through its intricacies, its…
Does a conspiracy still count as such if the would-be conspirators don’t really make much of an effort to disguise what they’re doing? How secret can a so-called “secret society” really be if its videos are trending on YouTube? These are the questions plaguing the host of the YouTube conspiracy theory series A Call…
Every Friday, dozens of new records are released into the wild. Some make big splashes, and others sink almost immediately. For most music consumers, it’s almost too much information, and save for those precious few who spend their hours glued to review sites and release calendars, it’s hard to know what’s coming out…
Bon Iver released a lyric video—always helpful when it comes to Justin Vernon’s vocals—for the new song “33 ‘God.’” As indicated by the title, the track is theological in nature, the video even opening with a quote from Psalm 22. Lightning bolts and various symbols flash throughout, and Vernon is backed by what sounds…
Justin Vernon’s genre-defying musical collective Bon Iver followed through on its recent teases yesterday, announcing a title, track list, and release date for the band’s third studio album. 22, A Million will be available on September 30, but fans of the group who managed to follow our advice and make their way to…
It’s not like sensitive bearded men in plaid shirts have had a dearth of sad, sensitive music to listen to over the past few years or anything. But one of the most sensitive, beardiest of them all—Bon Iver—has still been missed. Although bandleader Justin Vernon’s continued to put out music via side projects and…
Draw a line down the middle of Owen’s discography and you’ll find two distinctly different Mike Kinsellas. Having started the project in 2001 following the breakup of American Football, Kinsella took to recording albums all by himself, sometimes in his old bedroom at his mom’s house. Between 2001 and 2006, Kinsella…
Famous bands and musicians of Twitter, lock your doors and bar your windows because there are hackers on the loose! Anyone whose Twitter bio says something like “Check out the new album on so-and-so records!” with a link to a merch store is in danger, especially if they skew toward the indie/alternative side of things…