The lyrics, though fractured, are clearly heartfelt - yet I remain completely unaffected. Justin Vernon sounds separate from the World, buried by static and noise, and layered with jarring autotune. The best songs here flourish because they are written with structural purpose, and don’t just consist of fractured vocals drifting through a melancholic space. Instead, they thrived on brilliant, dynamic songwriting, and this is something 22, A Million lacks. Yet the best records from these artists - The College Dropout, Channel Orange, For Emma, Forever Ago - didn’t require obscure mixing or wobbly structures. The emphasis has shifted from being focused to feeling esoteric and excessively unconventional. The record follows a ridiculous trend that was prominent on Kanye West’s The Life of Pablo and carried over to recent releases from Frank Ocean and James Blake - for whatever reason, albums must now be messy, vague, and incoherent. 22, A Million is an unnecessarily complicated record: overly processed vocals, chopped-up lyrics, and saturated samples are the prime focus, overruling any instance of decent songwriting that you’d usually come to expect from Bon Iver. It’s a type of elusiveness that isn’t so much rewarding as it is mundane. Arrangements are frequently muddled, often to the point of obscurity. Melodies come in sketches, and hooks are a curious rarity. It doesn’t deal in structure, but in loose clusters of peculiar sounds and imperceptible words. 22, A Million feels like a nondescript blur.
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