After releasing a sparse, three-song EP last fall, Bon Iver will unveil their first album in six years this spring, combining the aforementioned material with nine additional tracks described as “a love story set to lush, radiant pop music.” SABLE, fABLE is due April 11 from Jagjaguwar and is led by “Everything Is Peaceful Love,” which will be released Friday (Feb. 14) in tandem with a John Wilson-directed video.
Produced by Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon and Jim-E Stack, the nine unheard songs tell a story in which “one person becomes two, darkness turns to salmon-colored beauty and sadness transforms to unbridled joy,” per a statement. “Where [the EP] SABLE is a sparse and solitary reckoning with a pain that long-defined the past, fABLE looks towards a vibrant future filled with light, purpose and possibility: a partner, new memories, perhaps a family.”
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The “conceptual genesis” for SABLE, fABLE can be pinpointed to Feb. 22, 20222, when Stack arrived at Vernon’s Wisconsin studio April Base with Haim’s Danielle Haim. The musicians were snowed in for several days, during which time Vernon and Haim collaborated on the song “If Only I Could Wait” and set the tone for the rest of the album.
Sonically, SABLE, fABLE is said to move away from the “evasive and dense layers of sound that guarded” Vernon’s voice on Bon Iver’s two prior albums, 2019’s i,i and 2016’s 22, A Million, while “Everything Is Peaceful Love” is described as “the portrait of a man overwhelmed with happiness upon meeting the one he will fall in love with.”
Other guests on the album include Dijon and Flock of Dimes aka Wye Oak’s Jenn Wasner, who also plays in the live iteration of Bon Iver.
Vernon has only performed in public once since the summer of 2023, and no upcoming tour dates have yet been announced. However, he will appear Feb. 21 at the On Air Fest in Brooklyn, N.Y., in conversation with author/broadcaster Krista Tippett about “music, healing and other central questions.” Click here for tickets.
Here is the track list for SABLE, fABLE:
THINGS BEHIND THINGS BEHIND THINGS
S P E Y S I D E
AWARDS SEASON
Short Story
Everything Is Peaceful Love
Walk Home
Day One (featuring Dijon and Flock of Dimes)
From
I’ll Be There
If Only I Could Wait (featuring Danielle Haim)
There’s a Rhythmn
Au Revoir
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