In other words, the track titles force us to talk about the album as a whole.

And as a cohesive whole, 22, A Million is worth talking about. Remember how weird it was when Bon Iver started singing on Kanye West tracks? It didn’t make sense then, but it does with 22, A Million. The transition is now complete. Bon Iver, Bon Iver was a stepping stone towards this, and in retrospect, it feels like an awkward sophomore attempt. This was always the future.

Justin Vernon interest in fusing electronic music and folk goes back to the beginning. And can you blame him? He recorded For Emma, Forever Ago on his laptop. Electronic sounds are an obvious direction to pursue.

Many of the tracks on 22, A Million exemplify this change. “10 d E A T h b R E a s T “, “33 ‘GOD’”, and “715 – CREEKS” are easy examples. What’s incredible about the tracks isn’t just Vernon’s unbridled creativity, but the fact that he actually pulled it all together. He made something beautiful out of all of this.

In a lot of ways, it’s fitting that we first got hints of this new Bon Iver sound from his performances with Kanye West. With 22, A Million, it feels like Bon Iver is trying to make a similar statement of creativity and power. This is Bon Iver’s 808s & Heartbreak. People might revile the record now, but we’ll look back on it with fondness as the turning of a corner.

If that comparison doesn’t resonate for you, it’d be fair to compare the album to Radiohead’s Kid A. It’s as if Justin Vernon said that too much of the folk scene sounds the same, that he didn’t want to add to the noise, and he wanted to make a change.

That change ripples through every track no this record. It’s almost impossible to talk about them individually. Lyrically, Vernon continues to be somewhat cryptic. But despite the distance that the electronics introduces, his voice feels more intimate and earthy than ever.

“8 (circle)” is a great example. Vernon’s voice makes it feel like the song is a private performance, but the electronics give the song a spacious depth it would otherwise lack.

It’s all so fitting for Justin Vernon, a man who seems bound to his neurosis of musical self-doubt, uncertainty, and reinvention. 22, A Million is a record about the ripples new sounds introduce, and the butterfly effects they create. It’s a beautiful record that’s reminiscent of watershed moments of the past, but only time will tell how we remember it.

As for me, I don’t want to be on the wrong side of history. 22, A Million could go down as Bon Iver’s first masterpiece.

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I’ll start with the most obvious: she refused to be pigeon-holed. Every album Angel Olsen releases redefines her, placing her in a new spectrum of ideas and music that defy expectations. It makes it hard to write about her, because judging her by previous metrics is impossible.

Angel Olsen forces you to judge her present work in a vacuum.

Somehow, though, each record feels better than the last. Although comparing them is foolish, My Woman feels like the real Angel Olsen. But then again, so did Burn Your Fire for No Witness. (You see the problem here?) As always, My Woman is a statement. This time around, Angel’s got love on her mind.

“Shut Up Kiss Me” feels anthemic, while “Never Be Mine” offers a counterpoint to that song’s intense passion. The themes of the tracks are clear from the title, but the musical and vocal intensity that Angel delivers them with leaves no doubt about her intent with the track. Angel’s vocal prowess elevates the subject matter.

“Give It Up” feels like Nevermind-era Nirvana, and that feels fitting for Angel’s take on the despair of love. My Woman makes love sound constantly painful; even when it’s good, it hurts. It’s fleeting when you have it, infatuating when you don’t, and painful when it’s gone. Angel’s take on love is similar to the way Buddhist monks talk about pain: love, lovelessness, and unrequited love are all crazy moments in time that dissipate as soon as they materialize. And every change is a blessing and a curse.

At least, that’s what Angel says on the first half of the record. On the album’s second half — particularly “Sister”, “Woman”, and “Pops” — Angel makes the case for her womanhood. Similarly defined by pain and wreckage, this is Angel at her heaviest and most aware.

The two halves of this record are stylistically at odds. The latter half is so much slower and more subtle than the first, but it never lags — even while it sprawls into eight-minute opuses. On “Pops”, Angel’s distorted voice carries the weight of a two-ton hammer. “I’ll be the thing that lives in a dream when it’s gone,” she sings.

With that, Angel writes her thesis about love: it’s a thing of fancy, and the dream is better than the reality.

It’s fitting to me that there’s no modern comparison for Angel Olsen’s music. We often compare her to Dolly Parton — perhaps her clearest idol — but there’s obviously room to add Nancy Sinatra and Joni Mitchell to the list. Angel Olsen isn’t a throwback, but she captures the dreamy female-led pop prowess that many of us love and miss. My Woman captures that spirit better than any of Angel’s previous records. It’s Angel’s best and most powerful record yet.

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II is a distinctly lo-fi record, performed almost in entirety by frontman Ruban Nielson (with the exception of the drums and a few horns). For this reason, the album sounds very tight musically — Ruban is clearly an expert musician — but it also sounds distinctly lo-fi, almost as if its being played underwater.

That’s the intention, of course, on a record that seems obsessed with vintage-style songwriting and musicality, but it might also be for thematic reasons. On one of the record’s most poignant moments, Nielson sings “I wish that I could swim and sleep like a shark does; I’d fall to the bottom and I’d hide till the end of time in that sweet cool darkness.” That Simon & Garfunkel-style melancholy is perfectly suited to the production style of the record.

The production is worth talking about: It demonstrates that Neilson has, compared to his peers, a superior understanding of what made those old records great. Today’s recordings reveal every note with crystal clarity, but these older records age so well because their production inefficiencies hide some of their details and preserve a sense of mystery (Led Zeppelin IV being a classic example).

While Unknown Mortal Orchestra is often reminiscent of the afore-mentioned Led Zeppelin and Simon & Garfunkel, they’ll also remind you of The Beatles’ approach to psychedelic pop (From The Sun) or Jimi Hendrix’s trademark fuzz sensibilities (One At A Time). This amalgamation of style makes Unknown Mortal Orchestra feel uniquely original, in an odd way: So Good At Being In Trouble is at once comfortably recognizable and uniquely Unknown Mortal Orchestra, with Nielson’s falsetto during the chorus giving the song a sense of urgency.

The same sense of urgency is often missing throughout the latter half of the record, which feels frustratingly more indulgent (although certainly in line with the styles the band is emulating). When the band finds their groove again on Faded in the Morning, it’s a much-needed and appreciated kick in the pants. But the wandering in the album’s mid-section demonstrates the band’s mastery of this lo-fi psychedelic style: unhurried and willing to experiment, the band refuses to settle on a single style. It’s an approach almost entirely ditched on last year’s Multi-Love, perhaps because the band felt they took the sound to its natural conclusion on II.

Regardless of why the band drifted away from this approach to songwriting, II feels like the sort of record that will later be recorded as a forgotten gem. Authentic and unique, despite its blatant influences and obvious stylistic emulations, II might go down in history as Unknown Mortal Orchestra’s best record.

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