So we’re guessing it’s about the time that Justin Vernon visited a monastery in Vietnam and did some fantasy-LARPing in an arboretum (standard monastery activity). Vernon’s native Eau Claire, Wisconsin, isn’t too far from the Minnesota border, though, so perhaps he’s referencing some idyllic valley near the border? Or maybe he created a fictional mash-up town to represent an internal struggle between home and the road, known and unknown, East and West? The valley in question also had a stream and some branches and some representatives from the Hmong people, “ an Asian ethnic group from the mountainous regions of China, Vietnam, Laos, and Thailand,” who helped him find religion (“writing scripture”) while wearing a suit of armor. While Wisconsin, Minnesota, does in fact exist, we could find no trace of Minnesota, Wisconsin. Forests? Moths? Dust? This is also about the inconveniences of camping. But unspooling the lyrics, we find a B-plot. Vernon himself has explained this one, saying that it’s about an acquaintance who has lost someone close to him. Follow along at home with the lyric sheet through a track-by-track lyrical analysis.
(A representative chunk, taken at random: “break the sailor’s table on your sacrum / fuck the fiercest fables, I’m with Hagen.”) But, because sometimes it’s nice when things make a little bit of sense, Vulture has spent the last few days poring over Bon Iver’s lyrics in an attempt to suss out just what the hell it is that Vernon is singing about.
Here’s Justin Vernon, explaining the mysterious lyrics on his critically adored, absolutely terrific new album Bon Iver, Bon Iver: “Every song sort of drifted towards that theme, tying themselves to places and trying to explain what places are and what places aren’t.” Does that clear things up? No? Of course not! Vernon’s lyrics are intentionally fragmented and surreal they are meant to elicit feeling, not tell well-constructed tales.
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