It’s Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon as you’ve never heard him before, unless you happened to be at the first — and only, as of last month’s Coachella — show as a trio* of The Shouting Matches, the project that includes Brian Moen (Peter Wolf Crier) and Phil Cook (Megafaun), in Eau Claire seven years ago.
*—Vernon and Moen performed a few times in-between
Things have changed for Vernon in those six or seven years. Bon Iver put together two well-received albums (For Emma, Forever Ago, and Bon Iver, Bon Iver), collected two Grammys, and flew out to Hawaii for Kanye West’s artist summer camp (but actually to contribute to My Dark Twisted Fantasy) on Ye’s dime.
Needless to say, the man’s earned the right to a passion project or two. And as passion projects go, Grownass Man, described as a record with “Midwestern knuckles and Southern calluses,” is pretty damn impressive.
The sound is muddy in the Alabama Shakes and Black Keys sense. Autotune isn’t featured in Bon Iver-like quantities,but it’s used to great effect, to build the growl in “Heaven Knows” rather than the wail in “Calgary.”
If Bon Iver, Bon Iver was the soundtrack to the drive through the Upper Midwest, Grownass Man is the party at the end of that trip, the sound of the summer bonfire party with the Brewers game on in the background and the cameras rolling, capturing the Americana for a forthcoming Levi’s ad campaign.
That’s sarcasm but also a begrudging acknowledgement of the project’s effortlessness. Bon Iver’s most recent music is a fine example of the benefits of meticulousness (another thing, besides auto-tune affinity, that the man has in common with Kanye) when constructing a sound. If anything, Grownass Man is a rebuttal. The way it maintains its jam-session quality, the record could have been recorded in a single take; helping that impression along is the fact that “Milkman” and “Three Dollar Bill” are almost entirely instrumental tracks.
South-by-Midwest, with a dollop of blues and surf: “New Theme” and “Seven Sisters” just make you want to twist.