The first Justin Vernon Bon Iver album in six years will be released on April 11th on JagJaguar.
SABLE, fABLE follows the recent SABLE EP, released in November, which serves as the album’s first three songs.
The press release said “it comes a love story set to lush, radiant pop music…. in which one person becomes two, darkness turns to salmon-coloured beauty, and sadness transforms to unbridled joy.”
Danielle HAIM, Dijon and Flock Of Dimes feature on the record, which was produced by Justin Vernon and Jim-E Stack, and primarily recorded at Vernon’s April Base in Wisconsin, after years that the studio spent laying dormant during a renovation.
The conceptual genesis for the album occurred on 2.22.22, when Stack arrived at the Base with Danielle Haim. Snowed in for multiple days, Vernon and Haim’s voices intertwined on ‘If Only I Could Wait’, a duet with crucial perspective, about not having the strength to be the best version of yourself outside the glow of new love.
Where SABLE, is a sparse and solitary reckoning with a pain that long-defined the past, fABLE looks towards a vibrant future filled with light, purpose and possibility: a partner, new memories, perhaps a family.
This Friday, Valentine’s Day the song and video for ‘Everything Is Peaceful Love’ is released with the video shot and edited by filmmaker John Wilson, of HBO’s How To with John Wilson. The video drops 3pm Irish time.
Judging by the merch, if 2024 was all about Charli XCX’s Lime Green chartreuse colour, Justin Vernon is claiming salmon as his own.
SABLE, fABLE Artwork & Tracklist:
- THINGS BEHIND THINGS BEHIND THINGS
- S P E Y S I D E
- AWARDS SEASON
- Short Story
- Everything Is Peaceful Love
- Walk Home
- Day One (feat. Dijon and Flock of Dimes)
- From
- I’ll Be There
- If Only I Could Wait (feat. Danielle Haim)
- There’s A Rhythmn
- Au Revoir
SABLE, fABLE info.
If SABLE, was the prologue, then fABLE is the book – but together, SABLE, fABLE is the album, and for that reason it is no fairy tale. There may be something undeniably healing about infatuation, and the intense clarity, focus, honesty and celebration it brings to these songs. ‘Everything Is Peaceful Love’ is the portrait of a man overwhelmed with happiness upon meeting the one he will fall in love with. But the shadow of SABLE, still looms, and old feelings can return, even after one has put in the work to reset and start fresh.
Like fables, each track instills a lesson, and fABLE is about the selfless rhythm required when one is enmeshed with another person or lover – a patient commitment to finding the pace for betterness, and togetherness. Gone are the evasive and dense layers of sound that guarded Justin Vernon’s voice on i,i and 22, A Million. The previous four albums were a cycle of seasons that is now complete; SABLE, fABLE is a canvas for truth laid bare.
Justin Vernon will speak more about SABLE, fABLE on February 21st, in a wide-ranging conversation with the Peabody-award winning broadcaster, National Humanities Medalist, and New York Times bestselling author, Krista Tippett, of The On Being Project. Closing out the annual On Air Fest in Brooklyn, NY, the two will sit down to discuss music, healing and other central questions. Tickets are available here, with audio of the interview streaming live via KCRW’s on-site internet radio broadcast, and later available via On Being.
