5 years later, I'm still a total sucker for my Bon Iver albums... they're ones I keep coming back to, again and again. When I heard the band was going on a (potentially permanent) hiatus at the end of last year, I was pretty bummed.
The silver lining to this news, though, is that Justin has consistently (for years now), created great music outside of the confines of Bon Iver. The first side project of Justin's I was aware of was Gayngs, a kind of half indie/half retro soft rock band with seemingly a zillion members in it. Ali and I actually caught their live act at the Paradise in Boston, and had a great evening.
Anyways, the point of this post is to share some of Justin Vernon's perhaps lesser-known-yet-still-awesome music contributions over the past few years.
#1: Justin provides the background vocals on this track from Lia Ices, a fellow artist on the Jagjaguwar record label. It's a fantastic track that tilts from its initial choir-like, mellow intro to a massive lilting ending full of piano and percussion.
#2: Volcano Choir is a band originally formed by Justin and Collections of Colonies of Bees. They're set to release their 2nd album, entitled "Repave," on September 3rd of this year, off of which this single comes. It's called "Comrade."
