SONG OF THE DAY: July 13th

This post marks the beginning of a new feature here at Rhombus: the song of the day. In an effort to bring you great music, both local and otherwise, and fulfill our goal of helping you expand your musical horizons to include the best artists available, we will pass along one Rhombus-approved song each and every day for your listening pleasure (barring global catastrophe.) These entries will be shorter than our normal articles, but we will do our best to provide you with the context and reasoning behind why we feel the included song is worthwhile and/or relevant to you. That being said, we hope you come back every day to check out a new song and enjoy reading Rhombus as much as we enjoy writing it.

Bon Iver, “Woods”

If you attended last Thursday’s Twilight Concert Series show at the Gallivan Center, you were treated to a phenomenal performance from Eau Claire, Wisconsin’s favorite sons, Bon Iver. The band’s beautifully sad sound pulls you in and holds you tight, enrapturing your mind and heart. “Woods” is probably not the most representative song to use in introducing the band to our readers, but I chose to use it anyway.

This song sounds different from every other Bon Iver song in the fact that it uses AutoTune software (see also: T-Pain) heavily. Normally, Justin Vernon and company eschew any technological enhancement, instead opting to play spare, stripped down folk songs with an unarguably organic feel. This is why “Woods” fascinates me so much: to hear such an anti-AutoTune band indulge in the practice so completely and use the resultant robo-vocals to create such a rich, layered feel is truly fantastic to me. If AutoTune should ever be used, Bon Iver should be the only ones allowed to do so. Some may hate this track on principle, but I hope you’ll at least give it a chance. I promise it can (and hopefully will) temporarily redeem AutoTune for the briefest of moments.