Well, for me anyway. First, the second best thing to be announced today was that Kanye West is headlining Big Day Out for 2012. This is rad. Personally I was still secretly hoping that Radiohead or even Prince was going to headline but then I realised that Kanye West is a super cool dude just tryin' to be a man and discussing how hard being a man is and shit and I love him. I hope he does a sideshow and I hope he talks during the show and says good things that I can record and turn into sound art.
While this is all very good and great, the BEST THING that happened today, in fact better than most BEST things ever (like instant coffee, or an alphabetically organised CD collection, or deciding as a group to disregard the limit of hotels you can place on properties in Monopoly and then landing on the un-bought dynamo of Mayfair and Park Lane in one turn) was the reveal that BON IVER is coming to Australia!
BON IVER!
COMING TO!
AUSTRALIA!!!!
(THAT'S US!!)
Words cannot describe. I am so excited. I am more excited than I was for Christmas, birthdays and summer holidays between and including the years of 1996-2005. I am more excited than I was when I found out I could purchase Sylvia Plath's entire life's worth of journals (the ones that didn't get burnt) from the Book Depository free of postage. More excited than the time my sister found a pair of Vivienne Westwood shoes at Savers and called me up to see if I wanted them.
I don't really know why I am so excited, to be honest. I first came across Bon Iver when I was really, really sad, and it's not exactly happy fun time tunes (the same sister who found the VW shoes at Savers describes it as 'indie noise'). But I think I found such comfort in For Emma (which I have written about on here before) that I have created this eternal connection to it. I know the album like the back of my hand; its intricacies, the little echoes, bumps, movements that you only pick up when you listen to a piece of music every night for days and days on end. It's a beautiful, beautiful work of art, and the same goes for Bon Iver, Bon Iver, and the same for Deyarmond Edison's early stuff, and the Hazeltons stuff, I just uhibcdjsoakodpjibckzx cannot describe to you in accepted language the effect Justin Vernon has had upon me.
I've always had someone else telling me what music is good and what music I should listen to. Which is totally fine, and I wouldn't change that at all, because if it hadn't been for other people telling me what to listen to I would've grown up listening to crap. I was raised on Counting Crows, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, America, Carly Simon, Janis Joplin - such a healthy, well-rounded upbringing! Then my big sis turned sixteen and started making CDs for us to listen to in the car - another healthy mix of The Stones, Bob Dylan, The Corrs, Killing Heidi...SO good.
But Bon Iver was something I found on my own. I was sad at the time, and I found someone who took the very same sadness (more profound and warranted and mature, of course) and created something from it, something so beautiful, and so reflective and resonant with so many people, and it was like an epiphany. Emotions are emotions but they are also the foundations for beautiful art. I knew this I guess, but it's not until you experience it firsthand that you truly KNOW something. That's what I think, anyway.
JUST SAYING.
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