No Ordinary Fool

Reviewing Bon Iver’s concert in the same venue last June, I reached the following conclusion:

[...] 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!

Last night’s return visit demonstrated these remarks to be both justified and prescient. Simply put, it was an extraordinarily good performance to a capacity audience. Justin Vernon said at the outset that it would be a special evening and the four-piece band made good on that promise in spades.

To begin with, the band sounded so much tighter thanks to the constant touring that they have been doing, with Mike Noyce on guitar and support vocals, in particular, seeming much more confident with his role. Moreover, they have added some great instrumental sections to some of the songs, most noticeably on Creature Fear, which had a simple but powerful percussion-led ending to it. This may be an entirely different sound to the almost-fragile songs on the record, but this really just goes to demonstrate their versaility as compositions.

Choosing a highlight from the show is difficult. This writer is an unabashed fan of Blindsided and he was not disappointed last night with the rendition that was on offer. However, the honours has probably got to go to Skinny Love, which built to a powerful and enthusiastic ending, involving the use of three drums. The crowd justifiably roared their approval afterwards.

Last June, Justin apologised profusely for not having enough songs yet to play. Even now, the more up-tempo Blood Bank is the only new one that they are touring with. At the same time,they have padded out their repertoire with three cover songs, of which Mike’s beautifully performed version of Graham Nash’s Simple Man was the stand-out number. With any luck, the song may even make it onto the next record!

The main show concluded with The Wolves (Act I & II). The audience was invited once more to repeat the line at the end, but a Broken Social Scene-type tweak has been added since June. As with It’s All Gonna Break, the audience are now encouraged to scream out anything they like towards the end. It may have lacked the unbridled, catharsis-enducing, lung-emptying energy that battle-hardened veterans of BSS shows now bring to It’s All Gonna Break, but there will equally be no need for Justin to demand this ending from Irish fans in the future – an epic in the making!

The encores featured a solo version of Re: Stacks by Justin, For Emma, and an acoustic cover of Sarah Siskind’s lilting Lovin’s for Fools where the band stood a little bashfully around a single microphone.

It is pretty remarkable to think about the distance that this falsetto-voiced singer from Wisconsin has covered in 2008. From the initial Internet whispers that someone had gone and produced a remarkably evocative record whilst living as a semi-reclusive woodsman in the middle of nowhere to playing three sell-out shows in Dublin, alone, it has been a meteoric rise to fame in the world of alternative music. Moreover, there is so much talent to burn here that it is hugely unlikely that his star will extinguish any time soon. I, for one, am perfectly fine with that.

Here is the set list, as I remember it:

- Flume

- Lump Sum

- Creature Fear

- Blood Bank

- Blindsided

- Simple Man (a Graham Nash cover)

- I Believe in You (a Talk Talk cover)

- Skinny Love

- The Wolves (Act I & II)

Encores:

- Re: Stacks

- For Emma

- Lovin’s for Fools (a Sarah Siskind cover)