Volcano Choir: Unmap
Label: Jagjaguwar
Last year brought us Bon Iver’s For Emma, Forever Ago and Collections of Colonies of Bees’ Birds — both among the year’s best, but not artists who’d seem like likely collaborators. And yet that’s what Volcano Choir is: Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon making music with the members of Collections of Colonies of Bees. At times, the effect is to push Vernon’s vocals into more free-flowing places (think of side two of Bon Iver’s Blood Bank, or Vernon’s collaboration with Aaron Dessner from the Dark Was the Night compilation); at others, the abstraction feels impenetrable (as on “Mbira in the Morass”). At its high points (“Island, Is,” “Seeplymouth”), this collaboration blends Vernon’s heartache with Collections of Colonies of Bees’ transcendent volume control and reaches a blissful end. (Toby)
