Loss is arguably the deepest pain a person can feel. It brings together sorrow, disorientation, and a longing for what was; a trifecta of pain, so to speak. Justin Vernon (the mastermind of Bon Iver) does not address the loss of a person to death, but the loss of contact with loved ones, and the loss of touch with your own self with 22, A Million. He weeps as he walks through the graveyard of past relationships, his anxiety and depression over feeling lost and out of touch with his own self seeps out in his electric, synthy layered voice. 22 is thematically just as melancholy as For Emma, Forever Ago and self-titled Bon Iver, but stylistically this album is much closer to his “Lost in the World” collaboration with Kanye West. The autotuned effects employed by Vernon seem to extend beyond his music and into the titles of his tracks, with names like “22 (OVER S??N)” and “10 d E A T h b R E a s T ? ?”
Vernon’s disorientation is most clear with 22’s second and third tracks. For much of “715 – CR??KS” he sings, but resting atop his own voice is a digitally altered and distorted version of it emphasising his struggle with finding his own identity. He creates a sound that is so specific to a feeling, utilising not only lyrics but the production of his sound as well. With “29 #Strafford APTS” Vernon’s voice is digitally clipped at the highest notes, leaving part of his song absent and reminiscent of long-lost, low-quality archival audio that has nearly slipped into obscurity.
The honesty and soul searching that Vernon embedded into this album bursts out with his unaltered faltering voice and the raw brass horns in “____45_____.” For an album layered with electronic synths and digitally produced sounds, partnering with the breathiness of the naked horns creates a kind of new hybrid orchestra.
22, like much of Bon Iver’s work should be approached similarly to a book of poems, needing several read-throughs to begin to understand the wordplay and allusion that Vernon works so closely with. His lyricism has always been eccentric, and with 22, A Million he adds several more self-fabricated words to his repertoire. Astuary, fuckified, unorphaned, paramind, and others lack dictionary definitions, which leaves them open for speculation based on context.
Justin Vernon’s ability to pinpoint human pain and the behaviours of depression in his lyrics is nearly incomparable. The album’s final track “00000 Million” in three specific instances plots out with firsthand experience the pain of depression. “If it’s harmed, it’s harmed me, it’ll harm, I let it in” is repeated in the chorus: how easy destructive behaviour can become. “The days have no numbers, they blend together.” Vernon illustrates how depression draws a brush across the wet paint of his life, smearing the image and drawing all the colours together into a grey streak. He closes the album with “I’ve laughed about it, I’ve laughed about it, I’ve laughed about it. No.” He emphasises how easy it is to pave over pain in order to feel like things are okay, to laugh them off in front of others all while the turmoil writhes in dark corners of the mind, but the “No” insinuates that it is possible to escape.
22, A Million is a break from Bon Iver’s stereotyped reputation as the Grammy winning poster boy of the alternative music scene, as the album ventures into much less accessible territory. The album should be approached as more of a well planned multi-medium art piece as opposed to an album you pick up to listen to in passing. Poetry, sound, and emotion intersect and 22 or even a million listens aren’t enough to grasp the nuance of what Justin Vernon is working through.
