Epoch
JAGJAGUWAR
8/10
ON “Handwriting On The Wall”, an a cappella track recorded around the time he was dreaming up Bon Iver, Justin Vernon shouts his head off. He screams and yells and hollers, his performance knowingly too big and too loud for the song. But there’s a point to his histrionics: rather than attempt to convey depth of feeling, Vernon is trying to capture the unique grain of his voice when pushed to such an extreme. It fuzzes out around the and especially on 2009’s “Blood Bank” EP, except on “Handwriting…” he’s doing it organically rather than digitally.
