Bon Iver – “If Only I Could Wait” (Feat. Danielle Haim) & “Walk Home”

This new Bon Iver album might be crazy. After returning last year with his brief, acoustic SABLE EP, Justin Vernon is about a month away from releasing SABLE, fABLE, the first new Bon Iver album in the six years since i,i. On the SABLE EP, Vernon returned to the stripped-down, personal style of his debut album For Emma, Forever Ago, and SABLE, fABLE lead single “Everything Is Peaceful Love” suggested that this would be the sound of the full LP. Today, though, we get two new Bon Iver singles that instead recall the immersive sonic environments of the more recent Bon Iver records.

The new song “If Only I Could Wait” is a duet with Danielle Haim, whose band Haim just made their own long-awaited return with the brand-new single “Relationships.” It’s a dizzy, ecstatic head-trip, with incandescent strings and keyboards swirling over a distorted drum loop and those two voices forming spiraling layers. “Walk Home,” the other new song, moves into funky R&B territory without getting too far away from Vernon’s eccentricities. This one has what sounds like a sped-up soul sample, as well as a deep head-nod drum loop and some utterly beautiful pedal steel, and Vernon gets a chance to go crazy with his falsetto. Both songs give me goosebumps.

Justin Vernon co-produced both of the new tracks with Jim-E Stack at his April Base studio in Wisconsin. Vernon worked with ANOHNI And The Johnsons’ Rob Moose to arrange strings “If I Could Only Wait,” which Vernon wrote with Danielle Haim and Jim-E Stack. Sean Carey, Eli Teplin, and Mike Lewis are credited with “slab,” and Lewis also plays saxophone. Vernon co-wrote “Walk Home” with Stack, Teplin, and Lewis. It’s got Jenn Wasner, of Wye Oak and Flock Of Dimes, on backing vocals and a synthesizer called the Morphagene. In a press release, Vernon says:

For the second look into fABLE, it couldn’t be a single; it had to be a double. First, “Walk Home” is a romp where you can’t wait to pull your clothes off fast enough and jump inside bed with your one true lover. And then — the two of singles — “If Only I Could Wait.” A duet. A bilateral crying question. How long can the two of us hang on to each other?

Listen to both tracks below.

SABLE, fABLE is out 4/11 on Jagjaguwar.