Description
Bon Iver – Volumes: One – Selections from Music Concerts 2019–2023 – Vinyl Record
Volumes: One opens Bon Iver’s archive with something more thoughtful than a conventional live greatest-hits set. Justin Vernon assembled performances recorded around the world between 2019 and 2023, choosing individual moments that show what the touring six-piece became onstage. The album moves from Los Angeles and St. Paul to Jakarta, Milan, Perth, Chicago, Portland, Adelaide, and Toronto. Heard together, those recordings reveal a band treating the studio versions as starting points—stretching rhythms, changing vocal textures, and allowing songs from different eras to speak to one another in a new sequence.
The ensemble is central to the record’s identity. Vernon is joined by Andrew Fitzpatrick, Jenn Wasner, Matthew McCaughan, Michael Lewis, and Sean Carey, with Xandy Whitesel’s live engineering preserving both the detail and the physical impact of the performances. “MAN LIKE U” grows from the brief Los Angeles “INTRO” with a warm, open arrangement, while “WE,” featuring Bizhiki, carries a much more communal force than its tightly assembled studio counterpart. Guitars, saxophones, percussion, electronics, and heavily processed voices do not sit in separate stylistic boxes here; they move as parts of one responsive band.
Several selections demonstrate how dramatically Bon Iver’s songs can change onstage. “JELMORE” retains its fractured electronic language but feels more immediate in the Jakarta performance. “666” gains momentum from the full group’s muscular attack, and the Milan reading of “HEAVENLY FATHER” turns a long-favored non-album song into one of the set’s emotional anchors. “P.D.L.I.F.” is especially revealing: its repetitive harmonic frame gives the musicians space to build tension through small shifts in timbre and volume, making the Perth performance feel patiently composed even as it remains unmistakably live.
The later stretch is full of contrasts. “HEY, MA,” recorded at Pitchfork Music Festival, is bright and direct, while the unaccompanied “A SATISFIED MIND” pares the sound down to voices and the humility of the old song. “33 ‘GOD’” again expands the scale before the Toronto board mix of “Sh’DIAH” closes the program in a suspended, reflective mood. Although the title places the collection in the 2019–2023 period, the included Portland performance of “A SATISFIED MIND” dates from December 2017; its presence reflects Vernon’s curatorial approach rather than a simple chronological concert document.
As the first installment in the Volumes series, this release makes a strong case for Bon Iver as an evolving live group rather than a studio project built around one voice. The familiar material is recognizable, but the performances emphasize risk, interaction, and the sound of a room responding to six musicians. It works for longtime listeners who want genuinely different versions, and it is also an unusually inviting introduction because it connects the intimacy of the early catalog with the layered, electronic language of the later albums. The result feels selected with purpose, not merely gathered from available tapes.
Brand new, never played and still sealed in the factory plastic
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