- INTRO - The Forum, Los Angeles, CA. Sep 15 2019
- MAN LIKE U - The Forum, Los Angeles, CA. Sep 15 2019
- WE (feat. Bizhiki) - Xcel Energy Center, St Paul, MN. Oct 03 2019
- JELMORE - Tennis Indoor Senayan, Jakarta
- 666 - The Pavilion at Toyota Music Factory, Irving, TX.
- HEAVENLY FATHER - Mediolanum, Milan, IT. Nov 05 2022
- P.D.L.I.F. - Red Hill Auditorium, Perth, AU. Feb 26 2023
- HEY, MA - Pitchfork Music Festival, Chicago, IL. July 23 2023
- A SATISFIED MIND - State Theatre, Portland, ME. Dec 08 2017
- 33 “GOD" - WOMADelaide Festival, Adelaide, AU. Mar 10 2023
- Sh'DIAH (boardmix) - Scotiabank Arena, Toronto, CA. Oct 06 2019
There are two sides to Bon Iver, and one cannot exist without the other. There is the part of the project that makes the studio albums. It’s heady, inward-looking, and always innovative. And then there is the live band, a group of six musicians who breathe life into the tracks and explode them into their richest form. VOLUMES: ONE is the first non-studio release from Bon Iver, and it is the perfect way to understand the band’s wilder, vibrant live side.
VOLUMES: ONE captures 10 distinctive live performances, recorded between 2019 and 2023, showcasing Bon Iver at their most whole. There’s a warmth and exuberance across the album, as heard on entries like “MAN LIKE U,” which feels like a gospel jubilee, with Justin Vernon joined vocally by Jenn Wasner, Sean Carey, Michael Lewis, and Matthew McCaughan. Another standout, “HEY, MA,” is robust and powerful, enhanced with particular muscle at Pitchfork Music Festival by guitarist and synthesist Andrew Fitzpatrick. And none of these recordings would be possible without the technical wizardry of Bon Iver’s essential live engineer, Xandy Whitesel. For the uninitiated and die-hards alike, these could well be the defining versions of the tracks.
Vernon began working on VOLUMES: ONE in 2020, and he spent a considerable amount of time combing through dozens of hours of live recordings to pull out the right songs to define Bon Iver. “This is what we became,” Vernon comments. “This is really us at our best. This is it.” VOLUMES: ONE, as a result, is something greater than a compilation or live album. It’s entirely new but still familiar, offering a prismatic look at an old friend, seeing them for who they were and who they are, all the goodness of which they’re capable but maybe too shy to show at times.
The new album is subtitled “SELECTIONS FROM MUSIC CONCERTS 2019-2023 BON IVER 6 PIECE BAND”, and it begins a new archival series that Vernon has modeled after Bob Dylan’s iconic Bootleg Series and the ever-delivering Neil Young Archives. The series will present the many eras and facets of Bon Iver — spanning live shows, demos, unreleased recordings, and more — “but this particular 10 songs,” Vernon says, “is like, here, if you’ve never heard Bon Iver, or you have and you didn’t like it, this might be for you.”
Complementing the 22, A Million and i,i songs on VOLUMES: ONE are three important pieces: the Covid-era hymnal “P.D.L.I.F.,” a cover of the Mahalia Jackson classic “A SATISFIED MIND,” and widely beloved “HEAVENLY FATHER.” Each serves a purpose on VOLUMES: ONE: “P.D.L.I.F.” represents a newer era for Bon Iver, while “A SATISFIED MIND” harkens back to the very beginning, as Vernon sang the standard privately with his DeYarmond Edison bandmates to practice and embrace his now-trademark falsetto; “HEAVENLY FATHER,” meanwhile, is a fan favorite that’s now restored to digital streaming platforms in the form of this 2022 recording, from Milan, Italy.
Bon Iver have not performed a full-band live show since August 2023, so VOLUMES: ONE also serves as a time capsule for a period that Vernon remembers fondly. The night of their last i,i show, the frontman wrote a poem to his bandmates: “The fact that I’ve been with friends, not just work buddies. And the fact that we’ve travelled all over the world together, while we all did our jobs at the highest levels possible,” it reads in part. “We crushed this shit as hard as anybody has ever crushed anything. I’m so deeply proud to be a part of Us.” It’s a sentiment that resonates across the album, six musicians making something beautiful and entirely their own.
–Matthew Strauss
