Jason Feathers
De Oro (Totally Gross National Product)
Three stars
If you judged Justin Vernon, aka the Wisconsin-born creative force behind Bon Iver, on his pastoral indie-folk day job, you could be forgiven for thinking that his musical canon is fairly narrow. Outside of Bon Iver, however, Vernon likes to get a little weird, most notably contributing to a number of Kanye West’s finest tracks from his past two long-players.
Now comes Jason Feathers, a shadowy musical mystery tour that continues his hip-hop flirtations. The available information suggests it is a collaboration between Vernon, a left field Minnesota-based rapper named Astronautalis (who also goes by the alias Creflo) and a clutch of lesser-known musicians, including S Carey, who is another member of Bon Iver.
Assuming the sobriquet Ephasis, Vernon is trumpeted as a “heavily seasoned guitar-crooning lost-cowboy”. OK then.
Deciphering what's musically going on during the course of De Oro, the debut Jason Feathers album, is more perplexing still. In isolation, the opening one-two of Leave Your Stain and Young as F**k seem to either be setting up a bizarre tribute to pitch-shifted southern United States rap, or attempting a full-on pastiche of the dirty hip-hop sounds that have invaded charts and clubs in recent years. There's more unrepeatable quotables than we can asterisk out here, while liberal use of vocoders point towards Kanye's influence.
Indeed, De Oro's vocals are dripping with sufficient special effects that pinpointing where Vernon is taking centre stage isn't always as straightforward as it should be – the first recognisable taste of his plaintive croon arrives within the soulful rock-rap of Courtyard Marriot.
Sacred Math takes a turn for the odd. It's an eight-minute epic that begins with sinister talk of "spring break '81" over spooky strings and ends in several sparse minutes of dramatic, downbeat piano, sandwiching a mournful Vernon cameo. It's perhaps De Oro's greatest success, for that schizophrenic uniqueness alone.
Cyclone, meanwhile, contains Vernon's most heartfelt contribution, turning a weather system into a metaphor for crashing through the delicateness of a relationship.
Where does all of that leave us? At just nine songs, De Oro certainly isn't a Vernon vanity project, yet it's debatable who it will appeal to. Flitting between twisted, half-speed hip-hop and electronics-embellished guitars, with abstract journeys in between, it's short of real rhyming conviction or sustained emotional dexterity.
All of which actually bodes well for Bon Iver fans: despite lengthy periods of inactivity since 2012, it still appears to be Vernon’s most viable outlet.
aworkman@thenational.ae
