Repave ~ Vinyl ~ Volcano Choir

As leader of Bon Iver, Justin Vernon has been extremely sparing with new material, releasing maybe two dozen songs in the six years he's been on the cultural radar. But it's hard not to goggle at the sheer quantity of his creative output in 2013 alone: He's released an album as the singer of a fine blues-rock band called The Shouting Matches, dropped vocals all over Kanye West's Yeezus, produced Blind Boys of Alabama's new record, and reissued a beloved early Sarah Siskind album on his own label. Yet another Vernon project, his second record as singer and lyricist for the experimental band Volcano Choir. Volcano Choirs previous record was oddly gorgeous and consistently mysterious, but it's a distant cousin to Repave, which fleshes out Volcano Choir's sound to late-period Bon Iverian proportions. If Vernon never releases another record under the name Bon Iver — and he's publicly suggested that that might be the case — more albums like Repave would render the issue largely irrelevant. It's that good.