BON IVER at Massey Hall, Tuesday, December 6. Rating: NNNN
Just a week after receiving four Grammy nominations, Justin Vernon, aka Bon Iver, stood before the crowd at the first of two sold-out Massey Hall shows as a man humbled.
“That’s the word that’s been running through my head all night,” he said, in one of the few times he addressed us. “Humbled. I feel so lucky to be here.”
The Wisconsin singer/songwriter’s 90-minute-plus set, though, was anything but meek or modest.
Opening with Perth, he began quietly on guitar, his mournful falsetto rising to the rafters (and causing many around me to gasp and squeal). But when his eight-piece horn-heavy band and a thumping light show came to life a few bars in, we knew we were in for a night of visual and sonic high drama.
Even the small, fragile songs from 2008’s For Emma, Forever Ago got the epic treatment, with slowly building Flume veering into an anxious experimental breakdown full of guitar-pedal manoeuvres and dissonant horns (Colin Stetson was on hand) before returning to a more familiar shape. Creature Fear grew into something stunningly stadium-worthy, with primal rhythms by the two drummers enhancing Vernon’s aching melodies.
Throughout, his vocals were emboldened by loud harmonies by the band, who seamlessly switched between horns, synths, guitar, percussion and violin, sometimes within the same song. Vernon went stripped-down and solo just once, for tender Re: Stacks, which he dedicated to “Kitty” who many might know better as Kathleen Edwards.
The last time the singer/songwriter came through Toronto, NOW wrote a cover story on him.
