VOLCANO CHOIR: UNMAP

[rating:4]

Volcano Choir: Unmap

Label: Jagjaguwar.

Release Date: September 22

For  singer/songwriter Justin Vernon, a member of the Discosalt Artist Collective and founder of Bon Iver, the project “wasn’t planned. The goal was to hibernate.” Vernon had moved to a remote cabin in Northwestern Wisconsin where all of his personal trouble, lack of perspective, heartache, longing, love, loss and guilt were suddenly purged into the form of song. The end result was “For Emma, Forever Ago”, a nine-song guitar-driven album of pain, love and loss that topped my favorite album of last year and in a low mood can almost drive you to tears.

Now, Vernon has put the folk based Bon Iver project on hiatus and teamed up with fellow Wisconsin band and minimalist experimental post-rockers, Collections of Colonies of Bees. The resulting collaboration is “Volcano Choir” and their first album released last month is “Unmap”; a beautifully haunting album written over the past three years….and not entirely by design. Guitarist Chris Rosenau thinks “it is by definition a record by accident because there was no idea to ever make a record.” Just a bunch of friends having fun and somehow an album was born out of the sessions. Similar to the Bon Iver project, Volcano Choir is riddled with lush choral walls and Vernon’s unmistakably piercing falsetto croon which marks the album. Vernon’s voice certainly brings  some familiar sounding territory here to the album which will please Bon Iver fans, but this is a far less lyrical album than his previous projects, more spooky than sad, and more experimental along the lines of COCOB.

While the album still maintains Vernon’s sincerity and passion, the collaboration with the equally talented Jon Mueller, Chris Rosenau, Dan Spack, Jim Schoenecker, and Thomas Wincek has created a much more strange but also more upbeat album, pulling bits of Mueller’s Experimental noise and percussive talents, Rosenau’s chopped up guitar style and Wincek and Schoenecker’s soaring electronic keys sound to match Vernon’s voice.The result is an album with a much stronger pop sensibility than anything COCOB or Bon Iver previously released, equal parts strange and beautiful and on the whole stunning. The single “Islands IS” (video featured below) is by far the most accessible track on the album, while tracks like “Sleepymouth” is a much more minimalist composed song, with Vernon’s haunting voice echoes and Rosenau’s sparse guitar riffs driving the song along until it builds into a soaring melody reminiscent of Bon Iver. “Cool Knowledge” might leave you puzzled when the driving song suddenly comes to a halt at 67 seconds and “Mbira in the Morass” has some definite jazz influences. Those familiar with Bon Iver B-sides will recognize “Still”, the previously released auto-tuned song with it’s synthesizer based structure that sounds more like noise-pop where “And Gather” is a soft new acoustic guitar song with steady handclaps, perfect for a campfire sing-a-long.

The album is at times abstract, subtle, mysterious, experimental, and poppy but it holds together by the interesting mix of songs and the talented musicians involved.

-JAV