Everybody loves Bon Iver… and the future of “indie”
The Indie Rock Concept still rules, and is still being used by almost all the brands which wants to stay, hum, hip. Such a remarkable achievement to our fast times. Maybe soon, however, this permanence on the top will no longer exist, thanks to the probably most eminent star from this cosmos in recent times: Bon Iver, the previously “alter ego” of Justin Vernon.
He´s back, now with a myriad of guests, following the superb and extraordinary 2007’s debut For Emma, Forever Ago. Praised reviews for his new and homonymous album from almost everybody – Uncut, Pitchfork, NPR and so on; an exception is Allmusic – keep the astonishment around his name alive. But what to say when the texture of his music is compared to Richard Marx and Enya, or when Iver itself hails Bruce Horsnby, or when he says that “even the indie rock world– which is supposed to be about truth and independence from corporate mindfulness or something– is totally subject to the paraphernalia of celebrity”?.
It’s a welcome, necessary and, why not, critic opposition to The Great Indie Massacre. But in this case, his point seems to be motivated by some late-20th-century-feeling reasons, in those sense of permanent self-denial. He´s a GenX, so no surprises here. But I´m wondering if we had wrong percepetions in 2007, so this new album would be the real thing related to this guy: his first album took us to a very different place compared to the new one.
And the new single, “Calgary”, is pretty much Coldplay-esque:
We bet this album can be remembered in the near future as a turning point to the “indie perception”, as the huge u-turn it represents. So two possible paths:
– Everything remains the same: the Indie Long Tail is really quite long, because has real power to be nothing & anything & everything. If even this album is understood as indie, so The Indie Idea will rules for a long time. Because at the end, it just means “no risk at all when it comes to music”.
– The 80’s adult soft pop muzak from The Indie King’ new album is too much even for the hipsters: so The Indie Empire will change, and we´ll have new behaviour intentions after this Excess Of Possibilities Era.
AA