Wisconsin is not a state traditionally known for producing music of national prominence, though there have been a few notable exceptions. Steve Miller was a hero of mid-70s rock FM radio, Wisconsin's laid-back ambassador to a format vice-gripped by mythic Detroit-bred elbow sleaze-grease. A decade later, the Violent Femmes had their solid one-album run as New Weird America's sex-starved, eager vanguard. Now, one name on the national scene evokes Wisconsin.
Justin Vernon's shockingly popular soft-rock outfit Bon Iver had a No. 2 album in June. Even in a world where ‘units moved' and ‘cultural impact' have never been so frustratingly decoupled, the humble, podunk luddite-type in me gets a little kick out of Bon Iver's market dominance.
Prior to June, the only tangible indication we had of Vernon's real-world pop-regard was an enormous online/print presence and, more mysteriously, Kanye West's bizarro-world recruitment of the falsetto frontman for two guest spots on his hopelessly overblown would-be pop manifesto My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy.
But what gives with all this hype directed at our humble homeboy? Despite Vernon's recent attempts to distance himself from his lonely-man-in-the woods image, I would argue that For Emma, Forever Ago's heartbreak and sickness narrative was a major factor in both its commercial success and critical acclaim.
I won't repeat the story, because any Madisonian bothering to read The Daily Cardinal's music column will have heard it repeated ad nauseum. Undeniably upper-Midwestern, it was a beautiful and sad story perfectly complimentary to the album's frosty arboreal artwork and the flannel-wrapped raw-wounded character of the music. Knowledge of the Bon Iver story lent For Emma an emotional weight, becoming as essential to the experience as Dylan's anti-lefty electric conversion ‘myth' had been to Bringing It All Back Home.
Of course, no album exists in a vacuum. Every act worth writing about, from Odd Future to Arcade Fire, has a PR-campaign creation saga. I find Bon Iver's particularly interesting because it is so intrinsically entangled with Wisconsin.
Anyone desiring proof of Vernon's purposeful public affection for the state need look no further than the UW gear he sports in side-project Volcano Choir's promo pictures. Or better yet, check out the giant inked outline of Wisconsin on his left shoulder and neck. That Vernon's home state is important to him does not need to be questioned.
I may ask, however, what his enthusiastic flag-waving Wisconsin pride might mean for those of us who consider ourselves fans.
Wisconsin, with its history of socialist mayors and McCarthyism, rustic Northwood resorts and Rust Belt urban decay, means plenty to its residents and plenty more to millions across the country. Even by Midwestern standards, though, I think it is fair to say that Wisconsin does not signify pretense or self-importance.
Wisconsinites largely take a great deal of pride in their salt-of-the-earth, blue-collar history. I hear it in the voices of folks as dissimilar as Janesville and Slinger Country-listening Tea Partiers and self-declared Milwaukeean ‘Union Thugs.'
This state wraps itself in its glorious beer-drunk and bruised-eye pride in a manner that would be quite unimaginable in my home state of Illinois, where Chicagoans (God love them) harbor arguably justified dreams of cosmopolitan exaltation and central and southern Illinoisans are regarded as alien.
Sure, I grew up loving Chicago, but what choice did I have? It was a mountain, capital of our corner of the world. Growing up in the city's shadow-sprawl suburbs, I had always felt that the love was unrequited. Wisconsin, maybe, was the homely girl down the street who would love me back. She wasn't a princess or a porn star, but I thought she was beautiful. Which brings me back to Kanye West.
Although Vernon and West's supposed working friendship remains fascinating music-nerd party talk, it strikes me as terribly discontinuous with the Bon Iver myth. Ultimately, West attempts to bring respectability and pretention (perhaps too much) to an essentially pop mass-market art form (hip hop—and I do not intend the description to disparage).
Vernon is really the opposite, a musician in an artistically pretentious niche field (indie rock), circumventing and subverting the cool exclusivity of the field and its canonized gallery of appropriate influences.
You won't be able to find much of any influence from say, Radiohead (one of West's favorite bands), on Bon Iver. You will, on the other hand, find quiet a bit of Bruce Hornsby and Bonnie Raitt, two terminally uncool artists Vernon name-dropped repeatedly in the promotional lead-up to his second album's release.
You will also find ""Beth/Rest,"" the album's much-debated final track and creative lynchpin. With its glossy synths and canned drum sounds, the track strongly arouses in me childhood memories of driving around in my mother's car, listening to Luther Vandross and Kenny G on WNUA 95.5, Chicago's now-defunct smooth jazz station.
The music was kitschy and overly earnest, the kind of crap Northwoods native Aunt Cathy might have nodded off to while I fiddled with my Game Boy Pocket during summer weeks in Rhinelander.
Later, in high school, I became a cool kid, disdaining the station and cruising past it during my 10-mile drive to Catholic school. I still remember one morning commute, however, when a snatch of vocal from my youth stopped my hand cold on the dial. The song was Jackson 5's ‘The Love You Save,"" and I listened. What a great song.
Justin Vernon not Sconnie enough for you? E-mail Alex at seraphin@wisc.edu.
