The People I Could Never Pronounce: Bon Iver's "Calgary"

BONE- EE-VAIR. Say it with me.

Yea, that's how you say Bon Iver, I had gone through most of my young life calling him BON-EYE-VER, and now I feel like a stupid American with no grammatical versatility. But beside my failing pronunciation, Bon Iver is a band founded in 2007 by the American indie folk singer-songwriter Justin Vernon. It includes Michael Noyce, Sean Carey, and Matthew McCaughan. Bon Iver had it's first debut album, For Emma, Forever Ago independently in July 2007. The majority of that album was recorded while Vernon spent three months in a remote cabin in Northwestern Wisconsin. I also found out that this is where he created the band's name, Bon Iver, which is derived from the French phrase bon hiver, meaning "good winter". But before you go counting Bon Iver as just a Indie group, think again. Bon Iver has collaborated with Kanye West, Nicki Minaj, Jay Z, and Rick Ross to create the smash hit "Monster."

But aside from their street cred (....I just wanted the excuse to use the words "street cred"), Bon Iver has just released their new CD, Bon Iver (thrillingly creative, right?), but that doesn't mean the tracks aren't. I'm here to rate the track that was also released as a single, "Calgary."

This is the video for Calgary:



This video is odd, but wildly beautiful and visually captivating. In both a good and bad sense, I found myself focusing on it rather than the song melding with what was going on. However, that doesn't stop "Calgary" from being a very "full" track, and by that I means a song where all the components go together so well, creating something cosmic-sounding in the beginning, and building to a reverberating pack of great sounds throughout. Although I think that the song tended to move a little slow and fall a bit flat, it was definitely entertaining.

Another pitfall is that it has a ring of Death Cab For Cutie to it, as does a lot of their music, but I still think that somewhere in the music, Bon Iver finds a way to make it their own with the use of the baritone guitar and their wonderful harmony of voices.

Calgary's Rating: 3.5/5