JAGJAGUWAR
Back in 2009, when the Blood Bank EP was first released, Justin Vernon was still known solely as a creator of smoky heartbreak Americana, the man who had retreated to the solitude of his family’s hunting cabin when his life hit the buffers. Yet for those who listened past the melancholy lead track here, which wouldn’t have seemed so out of place on break-upcataloguing debut For Emma, Forever Ago, there were clues Vernon’s music was changing. Of the four tracks on the original EP, Woods was at the time seen largely as a quirky oddity for its use of Auto-Tune vocals. With the supreme benefit of hindsight, it now emerges as a key song in Bon Iver’s canon, the moment when he began to embrace R’n’B influences, to range beyond his alt-folk roots. Key to this journey was Kanye West, who invited Vernon to Hawaii, where the rapper was recording his fifth studio LP, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (2010). The duo worked extensively together and the single Lost In The World featured both Vernon on vocals and samples from Woods. Vernon was learning how to craft music that could fill arenas, yet without compromising his integrity. This welcome reissue adds live versions of the songs from 2018, which sound more expansive than their predecessors, yet lose none of the originals’ charm, and sleeve notes claiming, not unreasonably, that Woods represents Vernon making “a new beginning entirely”. One, you would guess, that has succeeded beyond anything he thought possible.