When Justin Vernon of Bon Iver breaks up, we all break down (The New Yorker Festival 2009)

The story of Bon Iver is already approaching the level of myth: the mono, the cabin in the woods, the primitive recording techniques, the crack band he assembled upon his return to civilization. Not to mention the identity of the mysterious Emma. For Emma, Forever Ago is one of those rare albums that carved out a space for itself in the world, and then filled it.

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So is it any more meaningful to get up close and personal with the man who created such songs as "Flume," "Skinny Love," and "Blindsided"? For New Yorker music critic Sasha Frere-Jones, who readily admits he broke down weeping during Vernon's live show at the Bowery Ballroom, and who wrote about it in his feature on Vernon in the December 12, 2008 issue, it is.

Me, I know I could do without the Bon Iver groupies (yes, it's true they exist) squawking about how "'Skinny Love' is so about me and my boyfriend," or the pretentious college undergrads going out of their way to impress Vernon with knowledge of Vernon's own music -- how, exactly, do they expect that to work, again? Personally, I enjoy Vernon's music more when I'm somewhere where I don't have to think about these idiots liking it, too. When I can pretend I'm the only one in the world who also knows what it's like to be snowed in at a cabin in northern Wisconsin, and thinking about another time and place entirely.

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But the good thing about this music is that when Vernon starts playing, you kind of forget there's anybody else in the room, especially when he plays a song he insists will "never be heard again" (Michicant), or Springsteen-esque working-class love ballad like "Hayward," which was in consideration for inclusion on Emma but didn't even come close to making the cut, according to Vernon. And then there's "Flume."

div>Listening to Vernon play, and sing in a falsetto that you must hear live because it sounds Brian Wilson-level impeccable no matter how many Leinies he's supposedly drunk, did NOT make me love everybody in the room. It did perhaps though make it a bit easier to relate to the girl who, when it came time for audience questions, walked up to the mic and asked "I'm just going to ask what I most want to know...who is Emma?" And of course, Vernon's answer was what we all sort of knew..."she's a composite, based on a relationship I couldn't get over." But then he went on to add something that we also sort of knew: "It's really about not being able to move on from a time in your life."

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Vernon said of "Flume," just before he played it, that it was a song, and not just a song but a concept, a feeling, that he woke up to one day, and he's still trying constantly to understand, to swim toward (he really did say "swim," I'm sure of it). And that, I think, is what Frere-Jones understands about making the intensely personal experience of Bon Iver just slightly more public. Because so are we, and Vernon is letting us take that journey with him.

Mp3 - Bon Iver - Flume

Brooklyn hip, New Yorker-style (2009 New Yorker Festival)

There are thousands of bands in Brooklyn, but if The New Yorker swoops in one night a year to choose a handful of them to spotlight, it's more of a career boost than being gushed about on Brooklyn Vegan and Pop Tarts combined. And that's just how it is, my friend.

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It's easy to describe the The New Yorker's showcase at the The Bell House on Friday your standard attempt to expose the New Yorker's middle-aged readership base to what "those crazy Brooklyn youngsters are listening to these days," but Sasha Frere-Jones and Kelefa Sanneh (above) are no dilletante slouches, and showed some serious cred in curating "Brooklyn Playlist: A Special Concert Featuring Bands from the County of Kings." (Especially if you ask Bon Iver's Justin Vernon, but I'll get to that in a later post). Granted the Dave Longstreth-led Dirty Projectors are hardly unknowns, having already collaborated with David Byrne and Bjork, and having released their fourth full-length studio album, Bitte Orca, to gushy reviews in the usual online media, as well as an EP, Temecula Sunrise.

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(FYI: The Bell House, while a cavernous and lovely place to hear music, has just about the most aggravating location of any venue I know. Note: if you take the G train to Smith-9th Sts. in order to get there, after you exit DO NOT TURN RIGHT. For the love of God, do not turn right.)

I was surprised to hear, live how much their sound resembled that of the most recent incarnation of Animal Collective; being it's one of those few handfuls of bands with sounds that manage to be both un-melodic and pleasantly beautiful. Their live show relies heavily on acoustics (in every sense of the word); the tight harmonies of singers Amber Coffman and Angel Deradoorian, whose voices, like Gabriel's trumpet, tend to explode out from heaven at all the right moments.
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I didn't get to catch much of black-metal band Liturgy or House of Ladosha, described as a "dark-crunk collective," but I had to post about them anyway because their "glam-terror" posturing is unironically weird. (Or maybe it is ironic. It's hard to tell).

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In any case, we spoiled hothouse flowers living in Brooklyn tend to believe that as we go, so goes the nation. But when you think about the circulation of the The New Yorker (which even includes lonely, pretentious 7th grade girls in Stillwater, Minnesota, which I know from a long time ago in another life), it all starts to become clear. Frere-Jones and Sanneh's blog post about their selections is on the New Yorker site, and even includes Mp3s from each act (I'll start you off below).

Mp3 - The Dirty Projectors - Temecula Sunrise

Fiction + music + New Yorker personnel = simmering resentment (and a party!)

If I could be said to have a "thing," music fiction is it. Virtually everything I write ends up coming around to it, somehow. Since I spend a fair amount of time writing about real-world music, it seems like a natural fit. Also music moves me. Most people write about stuff that moves them. In that respect I'm no different.

There are so few good examples of it out there. (Daniel Klein's Elvis-as-a-private-detective books, awesome as they are, don't count). It's difficult to write about characters who are musicians, serious musicians, without coming off like a sanctimonious tool. I suppose that's why I continue to try to do it -- it's a challenge. New Yorker fiction gatekeeper Ben Greenman's Please Step Back, from what I've read, hits all ther requisite milestones, what with drugs and the horrible, soul-sucking toll fame takes. I wish him, and his book, well.

The release party is on May 12 at Galapagos, with after-party music by DJ Doc Delay. Greenman will be joined on stage by none other than (who else?) Sasha Frere-Jones, pop-music critic for the New Yorker, who will be engaging him in a spirited conversation about how great it is to work for the New Yorker.

It's free, but the drinks aren't, although the first 72 people to arrrive in costume will receive a free cocktail and book, so:



Yeah. This is what we've come to.