👍 Welcome to Bon Iver, Wisconsin

For six weeks, everyone worked in different little studios, bringing ideas in and out to main rooms, auditioning riffs, futzing with samplers, pedals, gear, and synths until something genuinely surprising emerged. More than ever, Vernon was letting the band dictate the sound of the record: psychedelic and warm, dense and open. Even though there were plenty of false starts and dead ends, Vernon attests, “They’re all seeds—a mood that you can build around. I didn’t want to be worried about being the author of everything, it was more about trying to find something I can cruise on.”

The record presents many vocalists alongside Vernon, including 64-year-old piano man Bruce Hornsby, genre-busting contemporary crooners Moses Sumney and James Blake, rapper Naeem (fka Spank Rock), and the Brooklyn Youth Choir. “There is a certain quality that happens when you have all these different timbres and textures,” says Wasner, who also sings on the album. “It’s a sonic representation of what he was trying to achieve with the project itself. When you get comfortable with yourself, you start to realize the thing that brings meaning to your life is actually other people.”

Even so, Wasner admits that, more than anything, it’s Vernon’s singular voice, a multi-octave tear-jerker rooted in gospel and blues, that holds i,i together.