Bon Iver: 22, A Million LP

Bon Iver, the musical project led by Justin Vernon, will release its third studio album entitled 22, A Million, in September 2016 on Jagjaguwar. 22 stands for Justin. The number's recurrence in his life has become a meaningful pattern through encounter and recognition. A mile marker, a jersey number, a bill total. The reflection of ‘2' is his identity bound up in duality: the relationship he has with himself and the relationship he has with the rest of the world. A Million is the rest of that world: the millions of people who we will never know, the infinite and endless, everything outside one's self that makes you who you are. This other side of Justin's duality is the thing that completes him and what he searches for.

22, A Million is part love letter, part final resting place of two decades of searching for self-understanding like a religion. And the inner-resolution of maybe never finding that understanding. When Justin sings, "I'm still standing in the need of prayer" he begs the question of what's worth worshipping, or rather, what is possible to worship. If music is a sacred form of discovering, knowing and being, then Bon Iver's albums are totems to that faith.

The album's 10 poly-fi recordings are a collection of sacred moments, love's torment and salvation, contexts of intense memories, signs that you can pin meaning onto or disregard as coincidence. If Bon Iver, Bon Iver built a habitat rooted in physical spaces, then 22, A Million is the letting go of that attachment to a place. The bulk of the album was recorded and produced at April Base Studios in Fall Creek, WI with pieces recorded in London, England and just outside Lisbon, Portugal by Vernon and a pack of trusted friends and collaborators both new and old. The album's symbol-rich artwork was created by NYC-based artist Eric Timothy Carlson.