I need to listen to it again (and probably another time after that), but I think we need to have a Talk about 22, A Million, which may end up a contender for the most Important release of the year.
The complaint I heard most about Bon Iver's s/t (not from me, mind; I love that friggin album) was that it was too safe and, consequently, boring. Vernon & Co seem to have taken that to heart and thrown "safe" out the window here. It's a routinely thrilling album, which is not a word I expected to use to describe a Bon Iver record in 2016.
I was thinking a little about Vernon's collab with James Blake ("I Need a Forest Fire") earlier this year. Blake seems to have rubbed off on him a bit here, too. "8 (circle)" sounds like it could have come straight off of Blake's debut s/t.
It's not a flawless album, by any means, and "Bon Iver fans" looking for a logical progression from their first two albums are probably going to feel a little disoriented, but man, it's exciting and a little jarring and one of the track titles has two dice emojis in it, so what the fuck, let's do this.