BON IVER - Blood Bank EP
Tuesday, January 20, 2009 at 09:05AM
soundscapes in Folk/Singer-songwriter, Pop/Rock

Now that the flood of praise has rushed on these last several months, Justin Vernon delivers a stopgap EP to tide us all over. The title track's maybe the most straight-ahead three-chord rocker in his repertoire, followed by the more familiar-sounding "Beach Baby", a song cut from the same cloth as "Flume" or "Skinny Love". The real breakthroughs, though, may be said to come in the back half of this four-song sequence, as single-line lyrics (backed by "All My Friends"-ied piano pounds on "Babys" [sic], and slathered in autotune on potentially-contentious "Woods") cycle and build cathartically.  

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