Prior to this album, I had rarely listened to Bon Iver. In fact, I had an active distaste of the acoustic, low-fi label that seemed to indelibly linked to their music. So when I read about this album, I expected to hear a classic “Bon Iver album.”

I was so, so wrong.

This album is almost always in active disintegration, beats and sounds fighting each other and jostling for attention. Uncomfortable feedback and clashes spotting the margins of nearly each track. It is both scattershot and cohesive. And it is amazing.

Take the opening track, 22 (OVER S∞∞N). The album opens not with an acoustic guitar, or atmospheric harmonies. Rather, it begins with a repeated sample of what can only be described as an apartment doorbell. The sound repeats itself, clipping over and over until we hear the first lyrics coming from a high pitched, crooning voice. “It might be over soon.” The voice comes in an out, as if you were listening to the song through frayed headphones. It sounds incomplete and scattershot. But then Vernon’s voice comes to solidify the songs foundation. He sings smoothly on top of the buzzing, as if he’s a one man choir delivering a hymn through your church’s old PA system. It’s overtly religious, but the message is at odds with Biblical themes. “It might be over soon.”

It sounds like a dire warning, but it sets the theme of the album almost perfectly. There’s clear hurt within the subtext of this album. To parse the lyrics looking for answers would be folly: Justin Vernon is known to write words that make less sense the more you read them. But that obfuscation doesn’t matter when the emotion is as clear as it is in 715 CRΣΣKS.

One of the standout tracks on the album, “Creeks” is sparse and minimalistic. It is solely Vernon’s voice, rendered nearly unrecognizable through three thick layer of autotune. Autotune is often meant to polish out the imperfections of the singer, but it is utilized much differently here. The modulations only amplify the hurt. The singer is so desperately trying to reach a human connection, a message at odds with the metallic layer of autotune layered on his voice. By the song’s end, anxiety and yearning is palpable as the singer tries to reach his loved one. “Turn around you’re my A-Team. Turn around, you’re my A-Team. Goddamn, turn around, you’re my A-Team.” When the last words of the song are uttered, you feel devastated. There’s no resolution. It’s not a happy ending. The song ends as it started: the singer alone and hurt.

The anger on this album is directed everywhere. The next track, 33 “GOD” serves as an equally angry song. The title is as edgy as your fellow Philosophy 101 student. Just look at it. God is in quotes! You’d expect the content of the song to be something like this:

But the song is so much more than it’s title. It builds slowly, layering disparate music elements on top of each other. First a piano, then a distant whirling sound fades in out. Then, similarly to the opening track, a high-pitched sample utters incomplete sentence fragments. The percussion in the song doesn’t begin as a drumset, but rather the repeated, pulsating sounds of a voice jumping across the canvas of the song. At times the voice is in your right ear, then it hops over to your left ear. It’s so unique that it’s impossible to pin it down in words. And while all that is going on, that same high-pitched voice is delivering audio-footnotes to the main message of the song.

Vernon: “I’d be happy as hell, if you stayed for tea” “I know so well, that this is all there is”

But then, the song shifts. A voice utters “I find God and religions too…” amidst the static of the song, and then low-fi drums begin to pound in the background. The music stops, and it seems as if Vernon is directly disapproving the notion of some higher power.

“Well we walked up on that bolt in the street

After you tied me in in the driveway of the apartment of his bede

Sent your sister home in a cab

Said I woulda walked across any thousand lands

(No not really if you can’t)

I didn’t need you that night

Not gonna need you anytime

Was gonna take it as it goes

I could go forward in the light

Well I better fold my clothes”

Just as he says those words, the song morphs again into something completely different. The fog and disjoint that distorts this song clears, and a revelatory clarity takes its place. It’s the audio equivalent of the heavens opening after a thunderstorm. There’s immense beauty in the moment. Every time I hear it, it gives me chills. The singer’s rebuke of God is immediately followed by something that if not heavenly, is definitely not of this earth.

A distorted voice asks: “Why are you so far from saving me?”