Not Magnificent

Justin Vernon put Holocene at the center of the self-titled Bon Iver record, and whatever technical category you’d assign it—art folk, ambient pop, something quieter than either—the lyric that lands is: And at once I knew I was not magnificent. The music video places a lone child in the Icelandic landscape, small against lava fields and frozen rivers and all that geological indifference, which is either too literal or exactly right. I keep coming back to exactly right. The song builds and empties, builds and empties, and by the time it’s done you’ve been gently reminded of your own scale relative to everything. Some music does this aggressively. Bon Iver, Bon Iver does it the way weather does—you don’t notice until you’re already cold.