Four years after his last LP and two years after his last EP, Bon Iver, a.k.a. Justin Vernon, has taken a break from working with GAYNGS and Kanye West to work on his upcoming, unnamed LP due in June. Yet he faced something that most writers do when they have been immersed in a specific medium: writer's block. Rolling Stone interviewed Vernon on his progress and process:
Somewhere along the line, I forgot how to write songs. I couldn’t do it anymore with a guitar. It wasn’t happening. ... I brought in a lot of people to change my voice — not my singing voice, but my role as the author of this band, this project. ... I built the record myself, but I allowed those people to come in and change the scene.
Those people? Oh, he means Colin Stetson, saxophone artist and Arcade Fire-collaborator, and Greg Leisz, a pedal-steel guitarist who has worked with Bill Frissell and Linda Rondstadt. With their help, Vernon put together ten tracks, including "Perth," a "Civil War-sounding heavy metal song," and "Minnesota Wisconsin," which features double bass drums and distorted bass saxophone.
Also, Vernon took a moment to comment on the surreality of success:
I saw an old friend the other morning and he’s like, ‘Hey man, congrats on everything. I’m just really happy and weirdly, wonderfully surprised that the world gets it,’ and I’m like, ‘Me, too.’ I don’t know how else to say it but that.
(via RS)