The Sunday Sound: Bon Iver via cell phone.

Bon Iver via Kristy's cell phone.

I had the privilege of seeing Bon Iver play at Boston's House of Blues on Friday night. Justin Vernon, the main musical brains behind the Bon Iver outfit, is easily my favorite emergent artist of the last couple years. I was absolutely thrilled to be at the sold-out show. My friend (and hopefully new show partner) Kristy purchased SRO tickets for the upper mezzanine. We were pretty well set for the evening.

Had I known our bags would not be checked, I would have brought my big girl field recorder. I wanted to capture every. single. song. But Kristy and I only had our perma-gear on us: our trusty cell phones (hers much more technologically advanced than mine). While I was trying to capture all the audio I could, she successfully captured the picture to your right. Throughout Bon Iver's set, there were nine musicians on stage. NINE. And all were playing at least three different instruments each. EACH. The amount of talent shoved onto that stage was overwhelming.

The best performance of the night was a sped up / more drum-filled version of "Blood Bank" (click through for a rad fan-made video featuring the studio version for comparison). Already one of my very favorite songs, this performance thrilled me to no end. As Kristy said, it was a spiritual experience. Today's sixty seconds of sound is a bit more than sixty seconds. Forgive me. I could only cut so much! Still, this sampling will never do it justice.

THE SUNDAY SOUND: August 7, Bon Iver via cell phone.
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