Today, with the release of two new singles, Bon Iver stretches out a hand and brings listeners further into the love story of SABLE, fABLE. Out April 11th on Jagjaguwar, the project’s first album in six years is a tale of one person becoming two. As SABLE,’s darkness gives way to fABLE’s radiant light, pain turns to purpose and possibility, stark reflections set the table for vibrant pop music, and feelings of desolate, depressed solitude transform into deep and devoted sensuality.
If SABLE, is the prologue, then fABLE’s book recently opened with “Everything Is Peaceful Love,” the portrait of a man overwhelmed with happiness upon meeting a future partner. “Walk Home” takes the next step, where in a moment of sex and irrepressible desire, “we don’t need no window curtains,” sings Justin Vernon, basking in a salmon-colored glow. “We can let the light come in, we can shed your earthly burdens.” But fables are not interested in happy endings, and on “If Only I Could Wait,” a duet between Justin Vernon and Danielle Haim, two voices intertwine to illustrate the weariness that can follow the joyous flood of new love, when one may no longer have the strength to be the best version of themselves.
Produced by Justin Vernon and Jim-E Stack, SABLE, fABLE was primarily recorded at Vernon’s April Base in Wisconsin, after years that the studio spent laying dormant during a renovation. While SABLE,’s triptych of songs was made at a breaking point – reflecting a chapter of fear, atonement and sadness – fABLE is a canvas for the vibrant clarity, focus, healing and celebration that comes with infatuation, when one’s eyes are locked with another’s. The conceptual genesis for the album, however, occurred on 2.22.22, when Stack arrived at the Base with Danielle Haim. Snowed in for multiple days, Haim suddenly gave voice to the crucial and sacred perspective that unfolds on “If Only I Could Wait.” Justin Vernon says:
“For the second look into fABLE, it couldn’t be a single; it had to be a double. First, ‘Walk Home’ is a romp where you can’t wait to pull your clothes off fast enough and jump inside bed with your one true lover. And then – the two of singles – ‘If Only I Could Wait.’ A duet. A bilateral crying question. How long can the two of us hang on to each other?”
In addition to the lyric videos for “If Only I Could Wait” and “Walk Home,” and the music video for “Everything Is Peaceful Love” that was directed by filmmaker John Wilson (of HBO’s How To with John Wilson), Bon Iver introduced these latest two songs via live-stream this week. Yesterday, from a trail camera feed called In Such A Small Time Frame – which Justin Vernon quietly set up in the trees of Wisconsin last October, and has been using to send messages to viewers ever since – “Walk Home” soundtracked an intimate connection between a couple atop a Floyd bed in the woods. Then, Vernon introduced “If Only I Could Wait” with a routine of original choreography, long inspired by the single.
Following Justin Vernon’s on-stage conversation with the Peabody-award winning Krista Tippett in New York City last month, he also discussed SABLE, fABLE with writer Laura Barton last night, presented by Rough Trade at London’s EartH.
