Volcano Choir, from left: Justin Vernon, Chris Rosenau, Dan Spack, Thomas Wincek, Jon Mueller, and Matthew Skemp; photo by Cameron Wittig

Volcano Choir: "Byegone" (via SoundCloud)

In the making-of video for Volcano Choir's Repave, there is a piece of paper taped to a window in frontman Justin Vernon's April Base Studios. It reads: "Don't lose the plot."

"There were times while making this album when we lost the motherfucking plot big time-- I think people actually said those words out loud," admits multi-instrumentalist Thomas Wincek. "It was just getting so convoluted." And while Repave was recorded over two-and-half-years-- with many songs changing drastically as more members of the six-man band deconstructed and reconstructed them-- it rolls over the listener with a crashing force that their more insular 2009 debut Unmap didn't explore. Only one track on the album surpasses five minutes, but nearly every song is packed with enough ideas, instruments, and words to make them feel akin to the epic anthems of Bruce Springsteen, Broken Social Scene, or even U2. And while the songs run with the most bombastic aspects of each member's other bands-- including Bon Iver, Collections of Colonies of Bees, and All Tiny Creatures-- they're still dripping with detail; they feel straightforward without actually being straightforward.

"We're not just sitting down at a piano and putting chords together," explains guitarist Chris Rosenau, who spearheaded much of the album's music. "We're cutting up a sample for the verse and then processing some weird sound for the chorus-- and then getting it to sound like a song." Though the instrumental scope and warmth of Repave comes close to matching that of Bon Iver's self-titled 2011 album, Vernon doesn't play anything on the record. "I wrote one guitar riff," he says, "but it didn’t make it." So the singer got to concentrate on his voice and lyrics, both of which he takes to newfound levels of depth and variation, cycling between his upper and lower registers, and even coming off a bit like Robert Plant on closer "Almanac".

Talking about the vocal sessions, Rosenau says Vernon "basically sang on fully fleshed-out songs, but we got to be there and bounce ideas off each other and laugh and cry and all this shit while he was doing these bananas vocal things that no one had ever heard before!"

"The miracle of Volcano Choir is we all trust each other," he continues. "We have no idea what the hell is going to happen when these people get in front of an instrument or microphone, but we know it’s going to blow us away."

Read on for our interview with Vernon, who we caught during a vacation with his family at Lake Tahoe. Topics include: sexuality in indie rock, finding happiness without a partner, what's next for Bon Iver, and his still-strong ties to his hometown of Eau Claire, Wisconsin.

"The term 'indie rock' is dead and uninteresting; indie rock is just as susceptible to all the gross things about people becoming total ass clowns in music, and I’m not interested in being a part of that."

Pitchfork: You've said that the Repave track “Alaskans” really set the tone for the album, and near the end of that song there's a scratchy recording of someone talking about death and dying-- who is that?

Justin Vernon: It’s Charles Bukowski doing a reading of a poem on French television. I first saw it on this great documentary called Born Into This and I never forgot it. The poem starts out with him talking about showering with this woman and washing his ballsack-- all this crude Bukowskian stuff-- but by the end he's extremely drunk and crying and he can’t get through it. He's like, “Make it so that I die in my sleep and not in my life.” It’s this incredibly powerful and manly man completely giving into the fact that he is weak and small.

So I was very stoned one night by myself, half-watching "SportsCenter" and listening back to “Alaskans” and, all of a sudden, I was like, “Oh my god, this whole outro section has to have this specific poem playing in the background." We almost went to production without it on there, though. We had to call his wife and get all this permission that took months and months-- but I love that moment. There’s a Bukowski feel to some of the lyrics on the record, pretty sexual things. I’m a pretty shy guy when it comes to girls and sex, but the way that he isn’t afraid of it is good, because everybody has those sorts of animal feelings. Bukowski was like the rap guy when it came to talking about that stuff, and it freed up a lot of what you’d call normal people into making it not such a big deal.

Pitchfork: Within the world of indie rock, sexuality can be stunted, whereas a genre like hip-hop is often overly sexualized; in both instances, I feel like there could be a better balance struck when it comes to talking about sex.

JV: I know what you’re saying. I am generalizing, of course, but in hip-hop, it’s like you get this shine for using the word "pussy" a billion times, and I think that that’s weirdly healthier than not doing it at all-- even though I really hope it ends soon because, you know, how many decades can we do that? And with white dudes in indie rock-- generally speaking, once again-- there’s this guilt: “Oh, we’re not going to talk about that.” There are plenty of people who don’t talk about those things and end up having really unhealthy relationships with sex; there are decent people that I know who don’t know how to treat their partner. It’s been built up so hard and so high that people are afraid. There’s all the tits and ass over every magazine, of course, but I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about how what happens between people is so misunderstood even between the people who are having the sex. Maybe some of the lyrics on this record are my way of cracking that egg.

Pitchfork: The themes and delivery on this album also sound more steadfast, like how "Acetate" has you standing your ground on the chorus: "I won't beg for you on acetate." Whereas some of the songs that you first gained attention for could sound like you were basically begging for someone through music.

JV: The interesting thing is, with a song like “Skinny Love” [from For Emma, Forever Ago], the thing that nobody knows is that I’m singing from the perspective of someone I hurt-- I’m yelling at myself for being uncourageous and unwilling to step up to the plate in that song. It’s embarrassing, which is why I ended up writing the song and it coming out the way it did. “Acetate” is coming back to myself and saying, “Life is too short, and love is beautiful and it ends and there are much deeper and more complex things to be concerned about.”

That’s just where I’m at these days. I’m not with anybody, I don’t have time for dating. Not to get too personal, but it’s weirdly harder to meet new people now. But for the first time in my life since I was a little kid, I’m not so concerned about it. I’m trying to be like, “Hey, dude, you’re super happy, this is everything you’ve ever dreamed of-- if you don’t have somebody to hold hands with right now, everything’s going to be OK, bro.”

Pitchfork: To me, this album has the sort of unabashedly epic feel of mid-00s bands like Arcade Fire or Broken Social Scene, which has waned recently. Do you care about bringing that sound back to indie rock?

JV: No. I didn’t grow up with indie rock-- I mean, I listened to bands that are considered indie rock, but I think that term is dead and uninteresting; indie rock is just as susceptible-- if not more susceptible-- to all the gross things about people becoming total ass clowns in music, and only worrying about money and image. I’m not interested in being a part of that. I log onto your guys’ website all the time because you guys have news about a lot of the bands I give a shit about, but I don’t think that everyone should only log onto your website-- it’s dangerous when music gets cornered by anything.

Pitchfork: I agree, and I think your openmindedness when it comes to music-- with all the different styles and artists you play with-- is indicative of the times.

JV: Well, I don’t want to get myself in trouble-- and I don’t think I’m super important or anything-- but I think it’s so funny that when you look at the business and the way that people make decisions in their lives, whether they’re in art or music or they’re in industry, they forget that being unique is the answer. Becoming yourself and finding an idea. Like Steve Jobs: “Think different.” Apple is not thinking different anymore, they are getting worse by the day. They’ve become bottom-dollar and you can see that transition easily.

It’s the same with music and people who make a good first record then a shitty second record because they’re scared and they want to have money and security. All the people I look up to are the ones who don’t give a shit about any of that. They just care about the people around them and about searching.

Pitchfork: Would you consider another career and doing music as a hobby?

JV: It is my hobby now, but it gets to be my job, too. The whole point of being happy is not feeling like you have a job. I’m sure there are days where you’re at your job and you’re like, “Oh my god, this is hard.” But hopefully, most days, you’re like, “This is sweet. I wake up and do the things that I do and I’m usually smiling.” That’s how my dad is with his job.

Pitchfork: What does your dad do?

JV: He's an arbitrator, which is like being a judge, in a way. Like if a union has a grievance-- if someone gets fired, for instance-- it will go to arbitration. It could be a players’ union for major league baseball; when Derek Jeter had his first big salary negotiation and the players’ union and the Yankees couldn’t decide on it, they agreed to have my dad decide. He was actually the president of the National Academy of Arbitrators a few years ago. We got to go to San Diego and he gave this moving speech to all these people who are basically paid to be logical. It was pretty cool.

The way I see it is that I grew up with a good set of values, but it was never too strict. I was always encouraged to be a free-thinking individual. I spent the first five years out of high school trying to make it work in Eau Claire, then I had to leave because there wasn’t enough going on in town. By accident, I moved back-- my old band broke up, the whole story-- then I stuck around because I didn’t have anywhere else to be.

Then it just felt like: Well, what a unique opportunity to be in town. I love townies. I value it, so to speak. That being said, I keep thinking about the kids like me who grew up in Eau Claire, and I wish they would’ve had more opportunities to experience culture. This town is so sleepy-- and people have every right to complain about how there's nothing going on-- but some of the people my age have moved back and are digging their heels in. I’ve got a friend who runs a global software company, he’s got like 250 employees. He could have bought a building in Minneapolis, but he decided on Eau Claire instead. He was like, “You know what? Eau Claire made me, I better give something back."

Pitchfork: Do you have any plans for Bon Iver in the near future?

JV: There’s a large opportunity for Bon Iver to be a special thing, even from a business standpoint-- just trying to do cooler things. Every band sells t-shirts and plays certain auditoriums, but I’m sick of being like everyone else, because I’m not. I think I need to take a long time. In the last month or so, I started to get some musical thoughts that agree with the future of what that project can be. I don't want the big flashing lights and red carpet, like, "Here comes another Bon Iver album!" I just want it to be my bedroom-y thing. But that’ll take a while to figure out.

Pitchfork: As far as doing things in an unorthodox way, it reminds me of a recent article in The New Yorker that contrasted Denmark's huge Roskilde Festival with the smaller Manchester International Festival, which is apparently more innovative and interesting.

JV: Festivals suck-- there’s no way I would go to almost all of them, with the exception of a couple. Unique experiences are another reason why Eau Claire keeps coming into my mind: Here’s a town that’s a fresh slate, that could completely rewrite stuff because it has almost nothing to offer from a global, cultural standpoint. It would be so random to do crazy shit there because people would come to the fuck out of Eau Claire if we had weird shit going on.

Pitchfork: What kind of event would you want to put on there?

JV: Right now, my favorite idea is doing an all-night tent show starring my friend's band Marijuana Deathsquads, where everyone would wear super-loud headphones, and there would be tons of subs and lights. It’d be really dope. I’m trying to think about stuff like that: How can a show not be just a whining guy with a guitar.