Bon Iver – Blood Bank EP

I’ve been wanting to write about this EP for quite some time now. It’s lame for me to say that with the Kanye album flying hot! Some said Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon was cashing in after For Emma, Forever Ago with a quaint, short four-song EP that was more about its use of auto-tune than anything else. I’m not sure but to me at least, it was a chillingly new sound to get lost in while dreaming of snow. The music all over the EP is softly strung – the title track creeping in with a chugging stomp of voices – and it’s truly an embracing grip of mesmerizing music.

This is “Babys,” the penultimate song that has the menacing piano line that clanks away at the sides of the walls. Vernon’s voice is solemnly sweet as he bluntly sings about the feeling when it’s right to make a baby. I have no idea what that feeling is like, I’m guessing it must be awesome but in the meantime, there is brightly layered music to listen to as we think about it. (Sorry about the accompanying video, but the song is what matters)


I’m not sure, either, how much Kanye West was inspired by this EP, to make his auto-tune smash 808s and Heartbreak but surely it meant something to him as he decided to essentially use all of “Woods” to set up and support “Lost in the World.” Vernon’s song is drenched with auto-tune and built around layers of vocals that travel in a round. Like a choir of fantastic tones, here are the song’s sole words:

'I'm up in the woods
I'm down on my mind

I'm building a still
To slow down the time'

Looks like Vernon was still dreaming about the cabin where he lived in while writing For Emma, Forever Ago. Fortunately, there was someone mainstream enough to get him some much, more, deserved attention because even just as “a quaint, short four-song EP that was more about its use of auto-tune than anything else,” it’s pretty bad-ass. – Bryan