Bon Iver "Calgary"

It's part of mvyradio's DNA to have Folk music.

I mean, Bob Dylan and Carly Simon and Bruce Cockburn and James Taylor and Joni Mitchell are among our core artists.

So it's only natural to want to embrace the new artists from the "Folk music world" (whatever that means).

There are some pretty traditional sounding artists out there, strumming and singing, and we play young artists like that (Tallest Man On Earth, for example). And we also try to embrace the more progressive, indie, modern Folk artists.

I say "try" because sometimes the most interesting modern Folkies, are actually kind of hard for mvyradio to embrace.

You'd be hard-pressed to find a young Folk-leaning artist more lauded than Bon Iver, so it would seem obvious that we would want to add "Calgary" to our rotation.

But there's this thing about indie artists that I've never quite understood, particularly in the case of Folk indie artists.

Where's his voice?

The thing about folk music that made it so dangerous, so confrontational in its 50s and 60s hey-day, was the up-frontness of the vocals.

Stripped away were the strings and the horns and the percussion and the production of modern music. Folk music was about the voice and the words. They were up front, standing atop a strident strum of acoustic guitar. From that platform, the writer/singer could clearly ring out his/her message.

I don't know if its modesty or shyness or stylistic choice or atmosphere or an aversion to appearing strident, but many modern indie Folk musicians bury their voice in the mix. They put on echo or reverb. They deliver their words in more hushed tones.

It can be a neat effect. Someone like Daniel Lanois, on his solo material, can make the deep, lost voice part of an appropriate sonic landscape.

But on this track, I kinda want to say, "Sing up, Justin!"

The track sounds a little weird on the air, next to other mvyradio songs where the person who sings is the thing.

That being said, we're here to support bands like Bon Iver, so expect to hear this song on the radio, even if you can't really hear what he's saying.


See the video on Youtube.