Bon Iver: s/t

Label: Jagjaguwar

Listening to Bon Iver's self-titled second album—three years in the coming and undoubtedly the most hotly anticipated album of 2011 so far—it's fair to wonder if it was him lending cred to Kanye West or the other way around. Sure, it's been good fun watching tens of thousands of Yeezy fans wondering just who the hell this bearded white kid starting his concerts is. But at a time when indie rock has been making overtures toward pop moves of the past (Vampire Weekend's affinity for Paul Simon's globalist pop being just one example), Justin Vernon's sophomore effort could be the most sincere and well-built bridge between the indie world and the mainstream yet. Or ever. In other words, it kind of makes clear that those distinctions mean less than ever, if they're still there at all. Perhaps that's only in the caliber and the openness of the melodies though; it might be hard at first to notice the music as more than support for Vernon's now famous voice, hovering among clouds, but he's constructed an understated marvel of an album: On an album dotted with places real and imagined ("Perth," "Hinnom, TX", "Lisbon, OH") Vernon sends our imagination into almost unbroken reverie. You'll want to spend all summer dreaming of those places, as well as "Calgary" and (more temporal) "Holocene." Who'd have guessed that the Bon Iver album not about a broken heart would be the heart-stopping one?