In a world of fluff and mayhem, we need Bon Iver more than ever

Telegraph

11-04-2025

Since Bon Iver 's last album – 2019's I,I – the American band's frontman and mainstay Justin Vernon has collaborated with Taylor Swift, Charli xcx, Beyoncé and Travis Scott. The glitchy, folk-inspired songwriting through which Vernon made his name on his 2007 debut For Emma, Forever Ago has become one of the dominant sounds in pop. All of which makes Bon Iver's fifth album, Sable, Fable (stylised as SABLE, fABLE), a tantalising prospect. Will Vernon embrace his status as pop royalty's go-to collaborator or will he continue to get progressively more experimental, as he has done on every album since For Emma? This intrigue is only heightened by Vernon's assertion that Sable, Fable will be Bon Iver's 'epilogue'.
Its certainly radically different to anything he's done before. All the weird noises, dense layers and sonic obfuscation that characterised Vernon's recent few albums are gone. In their place is the most emotionally honest and musically straightforward album Vernon has ever released.
Sable, Fable – produced by Bon Iver (pronounced like the French for 'good winter') and Jim E-Stick, who has worked with current rising stars Lola Young and Gracie Adams ­– is an album in two parts. The first three songs – previously released as the Sable EP last autumn, named after the colour black – deal with heartbreak. Sparse acoustic arrangements and forefronted lyrics dominate. Speyside is a stripped-back ballad about regret in the Neil Young vein, while Awards Season is a gorgeous song about creeping acceptance, sung almost a cappella over featherlight waves of synth and piano tinkles. 'Oh how everything can change/ In such a small timeframe/ You can be remade/ You can live again,' Vernon sings before a choir of saxophones unexpectedly envelopes the track. Vernon sings that he'll be seeing the song's unspecified subject on TV during the titular awards season, which some internet sleuths have taken to mean that it's about Swift although I imagine the song is a far more conceptual ode to moving forward in life in general.
Then everything pivots. The rest of the record – the 'Fable' section – is upbeat. After the palate cleanser of Short Story, with its line that 'January ain't the whole world', we segue into the uber-commercial Everything is Peaceful Love. It's a song about the joy associated with meeting 'the one'. Over a luxurious skitty backbeat that sounds like the 1980s soul of Sade, the track's massive chorus has shades of laidback Prince. The UK's Jacob Collier appears on From, a song so slickly produced that you half expect he hear Phil Collins beseeching us to think twice because it's just another day for us in paradise. Happiness suits Vernon, although the contrast to the first three tracks is profound. 'Keep the sad s--- off the phone/ And get your fine a-- on the road!' he sings. Has Bon Iver become the new Barry White? It's all quite the turnaround, even down to the fact that these songs have proper titles. The tracks on Bon Iver's 2016 album – 22, A Million – were called things like 10 d E A T h b R E a s t ⚄⚄. And now he's singing about nice bums.
Despite the album's occasionally jolting stylistic shift from darkness to light, there's something reassuringly well-crafted about Sable, Fable. In a world of fluff and mayhem, it feels solid, needed even. It ends with an instrumental called Au Revoir. Which only makes you wonder where on earth Bon Iver, loved up and high-spirited, finally, will end up next.