wax&wires

Wax Pick: Bon Iver – Blood Bank EP

Bon Iver’s newest EP, released this past January, is on sale for $0.99 at Amazon today.

Justin Vernon did a great job with this short 4-song work, seeping his emotional and intimate vocals atop moody instrumentation. Even though there are just 4 tracks, all slightly varied in timbre and genre, the album does not fail to paint a consistent landscape. A lot of the vocal phrasing and harmonies will win over fans of Fleet Foxes… well… the few that weren’t already fan’s of Bon Iver that is. Babys is driven by a piano reminiscent of Steve Reich’s Piano Phase that I really dig. I kept waiting for the line to separate and create some contrapuntal parts with the phasing. Though that didn’t quite occur, I like the piece nonetheless, and it probably makes it a bit more pop friendly. Woods presents a gospel-choir meets Imogen Heap’s vocoder and Auto-Tuned vibe, rich in textures and wrought with emotion. Throughout the whole album, the reverb saturation is beautiful; tugging your eyelids down, gently persuading you to abandon all this rubbish for simpler times.

Give it a go. It’s only a buck.

Bon Iver – Blood Bank EP

This entry was posted on Friday, February 27th, 2009 at 10:28 pm. It is filed under wax picks and tagged with bon iver, chill, electronic, ep, folk, indie, solo. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.