BIBJ Playlist of the 2000s entry #75: Blood Bank by Bon Iver

Full Details of the BIBJ Millennial Playlist Hullabaloo are available here. Today's entry is #75: Blood Bank by Bon Iver (2009)



Bon Iver - Blood Bank (mp3)

Imagine this is your scenario. You’ve endured two nearly simultaneous break-ups: your relationship and your band. You move from North Carolina to a cabin in the remote woods of Wisconsin. You spend the winter searching for an escape, and in the process record an album it’s unlikely anyone will hear. But people do hear it. Lots of people. In fact, the blogosphere blows up with person tripping over one another trying to come up with new ways to call the album a masterpiece. The STORY of making the album is inseparable from the album itself. So as a songwriter, how on earth do you go about following that up?

You write a song based on an episode of “Northern Exposure.”

Musically, Blood Bank would fit perfectly with any song on Bon Iver’s debut LP. What’s different is there’s actually a cohesive storytelling in the lyrics. While much of the LP’s intrigue came from poetic non-sequiturs, (“Only love is all maroon / Lapping lakes like leery loons.” Come again?) here Justin Vernon is pretty straight forward with his story. And the moral of that story is “The Blood Bank: It’s the new singles bar! Make a love connection while watching prospective suitors get tested for disease before your eyes!”