James Blake & Bon Iver: "Fall Creek Boys' Choir"

Let’s get square before going anywhere with this one: yes, “Fall Creek Boys’ Choir” plays out as much like a match made in heaven as it would seem to on first thought. Blake’s stumbling-beat-infused android histrionics thrown like a wet sheet over Justin Vernon’s searching howl make for exactly the sort of joyously damaged, mechanically deconstructed campfire spiritual the initial mention of their purported involvement drew from my sweating hope glands to begin with.

Blake takes instrumental and production roles behind Vernon’s soulful, bluesy vocals, opting to infuse them with the same digital choir effects and vocoder acrobatics Blake’d already perfected before this year on his own debut. But the detailed composition belies a very simple vocal repetition, which confidently cycles with Blake’s familiar cadence and glowing polychords while also managing to allude, more grandly, to the sorts of lonely, pastoral images Vernon’s vocals seem to contain entirely on their own.

Vernon’s melody seems to bear weight, but then slowly frees itself and careens over and over into a reaching, high-register appeal, only to drop back suddenly before beginning that Promethean climb again. Despite the seemingly contradictory conjurations of the artists at work here—one a defiantly futurist update on the other’s perfection of skeletal, full-moon balladry—the two realize the potential of their undeniably comparable talents, and the simplicity of “Fall Creek Boys’ Choir” is just satisfying enough to entice without giving too much away, invoking all sorts of fanatical what-if-ery as to the possibility of further developments in what has the assured potential to be the collaboration of the year.

To my comically feigned disappointment, Blake has pointed out in the days since the track’s release that despite the illusion, the sound that punctuates the space between Vernon’s choruses is not a dog barking. It’s a cute little thing called a cuíca and it’s at the heart of the samba, you uncultured jerk. But really: I’m such a fan of both guys so as to feel like I’ve got them well defined or that I can have a good idea of what to expect, it’s this fun little tidbit that symbolizes two artists, so lauded and hyped so as to become almost completely pigeonholed by dissection and critique, who undoubtedly still have a few tricks up their sleeves.

I may have been able to reasonably predict the material outcome of this experiment, but I had no idea how hard it would hit me. So yeah, it doesn’t really surprise; it’s only as good as I knew it would be, and not really any more. But ultimately, that’s my fault, so don’t be quick to dismiss if you feel the same way. To be fair, those expectations certainly weren’t low. In the midst of it, I really couldn’t care less about not being surprised, because “Fall Creek Boys’ Choir” is just grand.