22, A Million Reasons {I Love} {Bon Iver}

Last night Bon Iver sang to me.

Sure, there were 20,000 other people there. One of them even screamed “You’re perfect!” during one of the many silences in his multi-faceted performance, where pauses are just as much a part of the experience as the music is. But she doesn’t love him like I do.

And I bet her seat didn’t provide a loveline to his heart like mine did, either.

Moses himself couldn’t have parted a crowd better than this.

‎Many words have been written about Bon Iver; many by individuals who feel the same way I do. I know that was at best an adjustment, at worst a struggle for him, so I’ll keep this short. Hell, if I wasn’t operating on a gerrymandered three hours of sleep, I might try my hand at a Zach-type poem to deliver something more obfuscated, more clever, more like him.

715 – CRΣΣKS, was masterful. A sucker for auto-tune, I was keen to hear it anyway. My companion—an award-winning flautist from a family that includes 2 classically trained opera singers, several guitar players, and an undiscovered rock star—was less enthused. I know her well; I expected it.

Auto-tune has one job: to “disguise or correct off-key inaccuracies, allowing vocal tracks to be perfectly tuned despite originally being slightly off-key.” Purists think that’s cheating. I say, “Hate the player, not the game.”

A Brief History of Auto-tune

When T-Pain sprung onto the ‎scene (see what I did there?), his use of voice distortion was fresh and novel; auto-tune became a signature. Among T-Pain’s countless collaborations, his with Kanye West on “The Good Life” partly inspired West’s electronic album 808s & Heartbreak. Lil Wayne too experimented with auto-tune—and codeine—to mixed effects. From there, the levy broke. Everyone from The Black-Eyed Peas to Rebecca Black was using it.

Auto-tune is the truffle oil of the music industry. In moderation, it is an indiscernible improvement that even Geoffrey Zakarian can’t criticize. But like gluttons, we gorged. Truffle oil french fries, pizza, deviled eggs. Truffle oil ice cream. What was once innovative and delicate now tasted like oleaginous fungus discovered by a hairy pig, which is exactly what it is.

By 2009, Jay Z called for the “Death of Auto-Tune.”

Whether the critics were right, or we just can’t have nice things, T-Pain’s 2014 Tiny Desk Concert sans auto-tune was a huge relief. Discovering his natural voice is mellifluous on its own validated that a talented individual with a penchant for experimentation could successfully brandish auto-tune.

Bon Iver’s Use of Auto-tune

…and we’re back to Bon Iver. A studied artist has the liberty to employ all the tools he desires. Justin Vernon can play the guitar. He can play the piano. He sings. He produces. Justin Vernon may use a voice-changer.

But not just any voice-changer is sound enough for Justin Vernon. In partnership with his engineer Chris Messina, he “made an instrument,” a collection of software and gear that works not just for recorded vocals, but live voices and instruments alike.

What results is peak Bon Iver—something equal parts rustic and technophile. A beauty so vast we don’t deserve it, so it evades us and eludes us to infinity.

Bon Iver’s live performance of 715 – CRΣΣKS was enough to win over the skeptic I sat next to. I warned her not to fall in love, though, because he is my #CelebrityCrush.

You should probably back off, too.