Bon Iver Hits Hard and Soft With ‘Sable, Fable’: Album Review

As big and outward-facing as his music can be, hibernation and isolation have always played a big role in Justin Vernon (a.k.a. Bon Iver)’s creative process. His breakthrough album, 2007’s “For Emma, Forever Ago,” was the result of several weeks spent alone in a winter cabin in the wilderness of his native Wisconsin, and its aching sound sculptures and multitracked voices perfectly evoke that setting and the breakups (of both a relationship and previous band) that inspired it. While he’s made three more elaborate and at times considerably louder albums and collaborated with everyone from Taylor Swift and Kanye West to Bruce Hornsby and James Blake, the new “Sable, Fable,” his first full-length release in six years, is the product of another inward period but also captures his emergence from it.

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In fact, it’s actually two very different albums combined into one, with drastically different feelings. The opening, quieter “Sable” segment — which was released as an EP last fall — is atmospheric, moody, largely acoustic and even a capella in places, its four songs recalling the mood of “For Emma.” But after a pause, the album changes direction dramatically but unexpectedly smoothly, shifting gears into an almost R&B album, complete with falsetto vocals, Motownesque melodies and some early-Kanye-esque sped-up samples. Its final three songs (not including the ambient, instrumental closer) drop the R&B and veer into a vaguely pop direction, centered around “If Only I Could Wait,” an aching duet with Danielle Haim that is embellished with a gorgeous string arrangement and, according to the press materials, was the starting point for the album. It’s followed by what may be the most pop-leaning song on the album, the soulful “There’s a Rhythmn” (the album continues his penchant for eccentric spellings and punctuation — the title is styled “SABLE, fABLE”).

But all of the above genre descriptors fall short for an album that is uncategorizable every step of the way, a combination of R&B, rock, ballads, alternative and more, with arrangements and instruments — electric piano, pedal steel guitar, percolating beatbox — that throw a wrench into an attempt to pin a genre on it. Yet no matter the music’s mood, the album’s emotions are strong and often conflicted. A stylistically sprawling but surprisingly cohesive album, “Sable, Fable” contains nearly all of Bon Iver’s multitudes.