Bon Iver

Bon Iver remains rooted in the emotional sincerity that made Vernon's debut so mesmerising.

It's a rare thing for an album to have such a strong sense of what it wants to be. Bon Iver is about flow, from one scene and arrangement and song and memory and word into the next-- each distinct but connected-- all leading to "Beth/Rest".

On Bon Iver, his second full-length, an emboldened Vernon achieves a beautiful fantasy all his own, backed by a full band and buoyed with horns and pedal steel.

Vernon on Bon Iver solidifies his place not as innovator, but as someone who's found a nice, fertile plot of land somewhere near where folk, rock, R&B and indie rock intersect, and is happy to wander across its great expanse honoring all of it.

Bon Iver isn't quite a crossover move. Big-pop synths appear, but more in the way a radio hit sounds leaking out of your lover's earbuds.

The sound is a good deal plusher, the arrangements thickened with pedal steel, saxophone, horns, percussion. But Vernon still sounds like he's back in that Wisconsin cabin that birthed "Emma."

Despite its hype, its expectations, its blown up sound, and its many production flourishes, Bon Iver is nothing more than a solid placeholder album.