What you notice right away on “Sable, Fable,” Bon Iver’s fifth studio album and first since 2019, is its directness, its brightness and, in some places, its lust. Justin Vernon — the band’s frontman and creative engine — is singing more directly than ever before, and the production captures hope, thrills and a kind of unselfconscious exultation.
These have not typically been hallmarks of Bon Iver albums, known as elegant but abstract statements of emotional claustrophobia and fantastical catharsis. They have made Vernon, 43, a much-lauded folk mystic, and also an in-demand collaborator for in-the-know superstars — including Kanye West (now Ye), Taylor Swift, Charli XCX and Zach Bryan.
But those same qualities have also pigeonholed Vernon and his music as vessels for pain and anxiety — his own and, as it turned out, a lot of other people’s as well.
Eventually, the weight of that burden became overwhelming. “I think there was a good 10 years where it felt like somebody had a boot on my chest from before I woke up until after I fell asleep,” Vernon told Jon Caramanica and Joe Coscarelli in a recent interview on Popcast, The New York Times’s music podcast.
During the pandemic, Vernon began reckoning with the fact that Bon Iver — as acclaimed, popular and crucial to his social ties as it had become — might have been keeping him down as a person.
So he made some changes: He wound down Bon Iver as a touring outfit; he quit smoking cigarettes (after a five-day rehab); and he began spending time away from his Wisconsin home, in Los Angeles, with no agenda other than to decompress.
Those newfound freedoms helped lead to work with Jim-E Stack, a fresh collaborator, who produced “Sable, Fable” (out April 11) with Vernon, plus appearances by Danielle Haim, Mk.gee and Dijon. The album begins in familiar melancholic Bon Iver territory — three songs released last year as the “Sable” EP — but then erupts into a joyful and plainly accessible celebration of romantic possibility.
On Popcast, Vernon spoke about the burdens of making pain central to your art, how Los Angeles afforded him an opportunity for self-renovation and what it’s like to live in the tug of war between creative confidence and false modesty. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.
You can watch the full interview or listen to the audio version here:
JON CARAMANICA “Sable, Fable” is very sensual. There’s something tactile, almost physical in how the vocal tone hits. Is that what you were striving for?
JUSTIN VERNON I think so. If there’s been a talent I’ve had, it’s been just following my instincts. And I think the last couple of years, I’ve been getting out of the hazy and trying to come more into the concrete. It was all inspired by real feelings — becoming happier, becoming healthier, feeling more confident, feeling more bold. And I think it came out in the songs being a little more basic. Like, yes, I’m just going to tell you what it is, be more generous with lyrical content rather than evasive.
JOE COSCARELLI It is a bit literal for a Bon Iver project, both in sound and the lyrics. The melodies often adhere to a rhyme scheme or structure, whereas often in the past, you would smear the edges. Was that by design?
VERNON Yeah, I think I’ve just been listening to so much Bob Seger these last couple of years. It’s like, oh man, just give it to ’em. I’m not saying nothing bad about the old stuff, but now I’m just much more like, hey, we don’t got much time left to live — let’s be sexy.
COSCARELLI I want to talk about the journey of Bon Iver from a singular to a more collective experience. “For Emma, Forever Ago,” your debut, was known for its solitude, these songs pouring out of one man’s soul, but as the project continued to grow and evolve, you’ve collaborated super widely and landed here on “Sable, Fable” where Bon Iver is very much a band and a family.
VERNON The process of the first four albums really, truly was from one to many — the team and the camaraderie and the family that was built. After the last show we played, I just let everyone know, hey, I don’t know what else we can accomplish. I think for a band that doesn’t really have any hits, we accomplished so much at such a high level and we became the best that we could be. But I got very tired and I’ve been very tired for a long time.
This record was in a lot of ways the most personal record I’ve made in the sense that I really needed it. And it just sort of feels indicative of a new time, a new era, a new echelon.
CARAMANICA I often wondered when I was watching the concerts as the band grew — almost filling every corner of the stage — is this a tool of music, but also a tool of hiding for you? Is this a way to be as small as possible while making something as big as possible?
VERNON I think so. I was going through so much anxiety. It was just a lot of attention. I had a dream of having a career in music, but I thought it would be like, I play Wausau this weekend, I play Appleton next weekend, I play Milwaukee. And then for it to skyrocket — the rise was so big, it was kind of shocking.
I rode some of that because I think I had a sense of humor about it, too. But I think I was hiding in there because I wasn’t well. I was overworked and overrun by anxiety. You get enough adrenaline up on the stage, but really, when you’re that tired for so many years, it just eats away at you.
Musically, we just kept expanding, expanding, and then by the end it’s like, let’s go play arenas and make a couple tunes that will feel really good up there in that space. And then we did that. Now it feels like we’ve careened off the mountain into the sky and we don’t know what’s going to happen.
CARAMANICA Did you have people that you were reaching out to who had a similar level of success, maybe with also not the most conventional path?
VERNON Leslie Feist was always somebody I’ve talked to about this stuff. Because it even happened — I say worse, but bigger for her.
COSCARELLI Right, she’s all of a sudden on “Sesame Street.”
VERNON Exactly. I was a huge, huge fan of hers and then when we got to be friends, I’d ask her a lot of questions about that kind of stuff. She was like, I used to be really anxious, too, and she had this great thing: It’s like, I want to go see this band at Coachella but I don’t want to go out in the crowd because I get nervous. She’s like, “Burst the bubble. You’re just a person so act like one and they’ll treat you like one.”
COSCARELLI The new album is 12 songs, but it starts with three that you released last year as “Sable.” Was that always the plan?
VERNON I’m sitting and looking at a pile of songs like, well, these are it — how do they fit together? Sable is this dark black color and it almost started to become a cartoon of sad Bon Iver music. I like the songs a lot, but they were kind of these last moments, the last gasping breath of my former self that really did feel bad for himself. This feels like a return, but an update, so I was just like, hey, for all the people that just want to stay sad, this is for you.
COSCARELLI It seems like you got a little bit sick over the years of people wanting to see your insides, of having to perform catharsis night after night from the deepest recesses of your mind. Was that something you’ve been pushing up against this whole time — people wanting tragedy from you?
VERNON I think I did get sick. And not just sick of it — I think I became sick. If there’s a gift I have, it does seem to be bringing this church sensation for people. And I love nothing more than trying to give that spirit to people — that church setting outside of doctrine. But I kind of ran that vehicle to its death.
It’s also something that I’ve investigated as a person. It was all incredibly validating to me. I wasn’t exactly the most confident guy in high school. And then suddenly it’s like, oh, people are telling you you’re one of these great artists. And then you wonder, am I a snake eating its own tail? Am I staying sad, am I hurting myself in order to get that validation?
That’s sort of what the “Sable” thing is about: “Stay in the darkness, young man.” And that’s no way to live. “Fable” is: windows down, sunshine, everything is peaceful love — I love you.
COSCARELLI When you talk about being unwell and healing, what did that entail in your own life, to get to that place where you could be freer in the music?
VERNON Starting to make some pretty hard decisions, like not being able to sign up for tours. Or starting to have other enriching parts of my life outside of shows and musicians. I started going out to L.A. more, and it was good for me to just walk down the street and feel very anonymous. I was like, oh my God, I made a new friend for the first time in 15 years that I didn’t meet backstage at one of my shows or in my studio. That’s just an unbalanced life.
CARAMANICA You’ve returned to the word “sick” and I wonder if you’re comfortable talking about the shapes that took. Is it a physical illness? Is it drinking? What did that mean?
VERNON I think I knew I was very unwell for years but it was like, “I guess this is just how it is and I have to do it.” Of course everybody steps too far into the whiskey still every once in a while. It definitely takes some of that pain away. And riding all of that adrenaline after a show, sometimes it’s like, well, I have to drink 70 beers now to just find a moment.
CARAMANICA How long into the L.A. era did you feel the boot starting to come off your chest?
VERNON Well, it was so many different things. I went to a program at the Mayo Clinic to quit cigarettes. There’s an actual nicotine dependence center in Rochester, Minn., that I went to for five days, met these amazing friends and we all went through this incredible rehab together.
CARAMANICA And it worked?
VERNON Yeah, 18 months now. It was right around the time I came off the road. I thought Bon Iver is done, maybe. But I had these songs and it felt good to be working on them. It was right around that same time that I was like, I’m just going to get this little cabin that popped up in Jim-E’s neighborhood [in Los Angeles]. I love to nest — a tiny little work space, a nice couch, nice kitchen, just meeting people.
CARAMANICA I remember being at a show a few years ago, watching the crowd and thinking, oh, this is the Grateful Dead for this generation. There was something generative happening onstage, and then also something generative happening between the stage and the crowd.
VERNON I mean, Jerry is one of the only white visionaries of music. The way that it was like, “No, dude, we should have it sound crazy good and build our own P.A. and be playing in fields and give out LSD. We should not play by the rules and make 20 years of bad records and have the biggest following.” But they created a culture, man, and I still can ride for it. Jerry seemed to believe that that was a prompt from God, his duty. I’ve always been inspired by that.
COSCARELLI You’ve been able to move so seamlessly back and forth between your isolated, Bon Iver thing, with your people and your family, but also working with major pop figures. How were you able to maintain both and be yourself in both worlds? Because Jerry Garcia didn’t pop into Top 40 radio.
VERNON It all came to me. I’m really lucky and humbled by that. But I never was like, get me on a song. Kanye seeked me out, Taylor seeked me out, Zach. Then there’s the dozens of collaborations I’ve just done with homies or the people in Minneapolis or Eau Claire that I just do because it’s good and it’s fun and it’s what I want to do. I never got too hungry. I really didn’t ever put rising my star on the mood board.
COSCARELLI Do you plan to tour this album? And if so, what changes do you have to make to what that looks like to maintain where you’re at now?
VERNON I don’t know. I’m not going to go out and be like, “we’re retiring” or “reunion tour!” I have spent a lot of time writing about what would have to happen to play this music, to play Bon Iver music again. It’s a pretty long list of nos. But there are some yeses. I’m right in the middle of developing what that looks like but there aren’t plans now.
COSCARELLI But there must be people in your corner — business people — saying, we put out albums so we can go on tour and make some money.
VERNON No, I’ve got nothing but support in my corner. We don’t need more money. I think the money did a lot in the sense of our community. Stopping was really difficult because I took a lot of pride and part of my identity was providing for and putting on my squad. They’re all so good at what they do.
But I also don’t have a boot on my chest right now. What I’ve discovered is the most important is just to be where I’m at and to feel OK. And it’s probably been six months since I’ve had a boot, even for 30 seconds.
For once, I made a record, I worked for five years on it, I don’t want to go on “Fallon” the day it comes out and play a new version of the song. I’m going to let you listen to it for a second and I’ll show up somewhere at some point. But it will be more on my terms, and therefore it will be better for everybody.
CARAMANICA Do you feel like your ability to love and receive love is different in this part of your life?
VERNON It’s getting there. I think I love myself more. I’m finally just in this place where I’m like, I’m OK. Boohoo, I thought I’d have kids and a wife and that kind of love in my life. But I have my health, I have joy, I have love in my life everywhere I look. And I finally have gratitude and time for it. I’m definitely getting there.
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