Bon Iver Was Never Just Sad

“I don’t know if I’ve ever been this happy, which is really awesome,” Justin Vernon said. “If I was bumming out and making some breakup record now, how boring would that be?” It sounds like something the Bon Iver leader may have uttered during his recent interviews for Sable, Fable, which is being billed as a blissful mental and musical about-face after a career of sad-sack songs. But the quote is from 15 years ago. Back then, he was working on the follow-up to his mythically lonely—and hugely successful—breakthrough album when he wasn’t rolling spliffs with Rick Ross while taking part in recording sessions for Kanye’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. He had a lot of reasons to feel good and, apparently, he did.

Bon Iver’s subsequent self-titled album was anything but boring or just sad. It expanded the project’s sound in unpredictable ways, incorporating skewed post-rock arrangements and a sense of churchly communion. The same could be said of 22, A Million and I,I, records that further complicated the man-in-the-woods cultural shorthand that had built up around Vernon. For those who only heard Bon Iver’s music from lazy placements of “Holocene” or “Skinny Love” in movies and TV shows looking to milk some cheap sentimentality out of a scene, Vernon could seem like the ultimate wounded angel, doomed to fall forever. But those who seriously sat with his work have long known its many dimensions—including its serenity, its anger, and yes, its joy. Consider the rush of “Blood Bank,” which has evolved into a show-stopping moment of catharsis on stage. Or the slippery peace found in “22 (Over Soon),” its chirpy vocal samples and smooth saxophone underlining its temporary pleasures. Or “U (Man Like),” an examination of toxic masculinity amid the MeToo era in the form of a stately piano reverie. That kind complexity is what made Bon Iver’s music so compelling for so long.

In presentation and, often, in form, Sable, Fable undoes that richness, boiling it down to a relatively straightforward black-and-white (or, I guess, black-and-salmon) palette. Originally released as a three-song EP late last year, Sable is the glum, dude-with-a-guitar prelude; Fable is its brighter counterpart, where Vernon ditches his surreal lyrics and swerving song structures for odes to infatuation and heartbreak that generally come in digestible three-and-a-half-minute bites. All together, the album plays like a left turn out of a neighborhood filled with winding streets into one that’s safely gridded.

To be clear, I am happy that Justin Vernon is happy—that the 43-year-old no longer feels like he has a “boot on his chest” due to pressure and anxiety, as he recently told The New York Times. But I also never considered him the musical equivalent of the Crying Jordan meme in the first place. His albums have always been so satisfying because they present the human condition in all of its varied and surprising forms; to me, that’s what life is really like. On Sable, Fable, it often feels as if he’s reacting to the too-easy myth of miserabilia folks have foisted upon him instead of delving deep into the muck of human existence.

There are offenders on both the “sad” and “happy” parts of the album. The record’s first proper song, “Things Behind Things Behind Things,” gets caught up in vague generalities, self-defeating admissions, and clunky rhymes, all backed by pitter-patter folk instrumentation that goes pretty much exactly where you’d expect it to go. “Everything Is Peaceful Love,” the album’s thesis statement, is the type of track where every choice—from the unchanging beat to the dewy keys to the lulling melodies—is aimed to soothe and comfort. It’s a song about being content to live in the moment, to stop worrying and just accept love, but goofily cute lines like “damn if I’m not climbin’ up a tree right now!” give it an air of grating children’s music. (Even a video by everyone’s favorite weirdly poignant documentarian, John Wilson, can’t save it.)

Almost everything on the Fable portion of the album, which was mainly produced by Vernon alongside relatively new collaborator Jim-E Stack, lays out a pretty simple beat, which plods along for a few minutes before abruptly stopping. There are hints of R&B and gospel, but many of the record’s grooves come off stilted, or aren’t given proper room to expand and contract. “Walk Home” aims for sexy and settles for sputtering; “From” reaches for a mid-tempo strut a la Bonnie Raitt or Haim, but never fully locks in. Even though the album came together over the course of five years, its lack of nuance, both musically and thematically, makes it feel oddly undercooked.

Which is not to say there is zero nuance happening here. In the realm of modern music by white guys who like to sing in high pitches, there’s still more angst and self-reflection on Sable, Fable than on a Maroon 5 album, or something by Justin Timberlake or latter-day Coldplay. A more apt comparison is one-time Vernon collaborator James Blake’s middling singer-songwriter albums of the previous decade, like Assume Form and The Colour in Anything. Vernon’s voice is such a visceral instrument on its own, so cutting its inherent intensity with head-scratching lyrics or unusual sounds only adds to its power; dial those intriguing elements down, and the overall impact of Bon Iver’s music can feel basic, almost pandering. “Of this I am certain of, you was made for me,” he sings over neatly resolving chords on “Walk Home,” adding little to a line that’s been used countless times before. But when Vernon is truly on—exerting more effort in adding shade to our core emotions rather than erasing it—he can still be untouchable.

Take “Speyside,” which holds the standard Bon Iver myth up to an infinite mirror, as Vernon looks back on his unlikely trajectory with a winning self-awareness. There’s also “Day One,” which punctures the tortured-artist mindset with a ecstatic, chopped-up beat reminiscent of Old Kanye and guest vocals from Dijon, perhaps the most exciting young Bon Iver acolyte. For this relatively unadorned album about the ups and downs of relationships, the mirage of a perfect family, and how you need to find peace within yourself before you can share it with someone else, it makes sense that the most moving song is a duet. “If Only I Could Wait” has Vernon and Danielle Haim singing to each other from across a great divide. It sounds like an ode to all the give and take that comes with a long-distance love—the impatience, the constant questioning, the waiting. The song pulls off the trick of being both inside of this dilemma and looking at it from above with a sense of equanimity. It’s funky, ambient, glorious, with Vernon and Haim delivering vocal performances that peak with a bridge where they seem to be singing at and over each other. “But is it only years away now?” asks Vernon, as Haim pleads to “keep holding on.” There’s no happy ending to the song, but there’s no moping either.

Historically, Bon Iver’s music has often felt out-of-time, a transmission from some conflicted limbo that’s beautifully oblivious to trends and commercial concerns. In hindsight, though, their albums could be seen as prescient amid the larger scope of politics and culture, as if Vernon were tapped into a higher frequency. Bon Iver sure does sound imbued with the lofty potential, and dashed hopes, of the Obama era. Released in the fall of 2016, when most pollsters were taking a Hillary Clinton presidency for granted, the confrontational 22, A Million ended up being a bracing preview of future tumult. And I,I, which came out six months before the pandemic took hold, featured the sorts of dystopian flashes, meditative interludes, and community-forward values that overtook much of humanity during lockdowns. In 2025, Bon Iver still isn’t hopping on any commercial bandwagons. But coming amid Trump 2 and all the tragedy that entails—what we’ve seen and what we have yet to see—Sable, Fable can’t help but feel at least a little off. No one wants Bon Iver to put out a politically charged manifesto against autocracy just like no one wants Justin Vernon to be buried in woe at all times. But we do expect him to reflect our innermost feelings back to us in ways we could never quite articulate. We expect generosity, not solipsism. We expect a new way inside, not an escape.