No Ordinary Fool

Yes, the roof is too low. Yes, it can be hot in there. Yes, you do need to get there early in order to see the stage and, yes, the disco beat of the bar next door is quite audible whenever someone enters or leaves. Yet, I was still hoping that seeing Bon Iver in as intimate a location as Crawdaddy might prove to be something special… As it turns out, the show had been moved to the much larger Tripod stage next door. Drat! It was now going to be a seated affair. Double drat! Then, just as you think that things cannot get much worse, it turns out to be a branded “beer” event. Triple drat! The night was going to Hell in a handcart. In double-jig time too.

Muttley, DO something!

Enter stage right James McMorrow, bearing something of a gangly resemablance to Josh Ritter. His acoustic guitar-based songs were fine enough, but his nervous geeky laugh when his stories between songs tailed off badly was hard not to chuckle at. The earlier annoyances were beginning to dissipate a little.

He was followed by a German seven-piece called Get Well Soon, which ranks right up there with Ham Sandwich in terms of bands with names blessed by banality. Fortunately, their music was a bit more interesting, if somewhat paint-by-numbers in approach. With a clear doff of the hat to Arcade Fire, they proved to be keen disciples of the quiet-loud multi-instrument school of rock. While the lead singer looked like he uses the same barber as Brett Anderson, he did have a fine, powerful singing voice. Moreover, his sister was no mean violinist. In all, they came across as being a band that could be worth keeping an eye on, but they firstly need to break free from the lack of spontaneity that held their performance back last night. It would be good to see them having as much fun throughout their set as they did with the last number that they played.

In any event, by now, I was getting back in good humour again!

The final step on the road to recovery was taken when the MC announced that the audience had been kindly asked by the artist to shut up and stay seated during the headline performance. He was not that blunt, in truth, but he got his point across and it was by-and-large respected afterwards.

Holy isolated log cabin in Wisconsin, Batman, could this prove to be a good show yet?

Unfortunately, opening song Flume proved to be quite a letdown for me. So much so, that I genuinely felt that I might have to leave if the show carried on in that vein, as I did not want all of the songs to be ruined by what I was hearing. Very simply, Justin Vernon was accompanied by a young (and when I say “young”, I do mean “young”) pair of musicians on baritone guitar and drums respectively. However, on Flume, the disturbingly loud sound of the guitar jarred badly – really badly, in fact – with the soft, plaintive singing of Justin.

It did get better from thereon in though, beginning with Lump Sum and the warmly-welcomed Skinny Love. Both turned out to be fuller-sounding songs then the versions recorded for the album. The combination of all thee musicians on the vocals was quite something and only got better as the night went on.

Indeed, it was the rest of the set that delivered the music that I had really come to hear. Bringing out his fantastic-sounding 80-year old National acoustic guitar for the first time, Justin got the crowd repeating the chorus line on a fine version of The Wolves. It was immediately trumped though by a superb rendition of Blindsided, which featured a powerful mid-song crescendo of instrumental electric blues, between two evocative singing parts. I am now fully of the opinion that this is the best song on the album, bar none!

It was around this time that Justin began to apologise a surprising amount for only having so many songs to play, but that they had at least three new ones that they were working on. At the same time, there was still the cojoined twins of Creature Fear and a thumping version of Team to come, as well as a superb solo version of Re: Stacks, and the unsurprising show-closer For Emma. Presumably, time went against Wisconsin also getting a run out.

To sum it all up so, For Emma, Forever Ago is comfortably one of the best albums that I have heard for some time. Perhaps it was due to last night being the end of a long tour for the band, perhaps it was due to the change of venue, or perhaps it was due to not having their own electric guitars with them, but I am not sure that this performance did the album the kind of truly magical justice that it deserves. At the same time, where the high points were reached, they were spellbinding, breathless moments.

Are my expectations quite high here? Yes. Should they be? Well, why not?

In any event, Justin promised to be back in the Autumn. If held indoors, I cannot help but feel that this will be the show not to miss!

The set list, as I remember it, bears an almost identical resemblance to the album track listing. It was as follows:

- Flume

- Lump Sun 

 - Skinny Love

- The Wolves

- Blindsided

- Creature Fear

- Team

- Re: Stacks

- For Emma