Video, like everything else, produced by Precious Moments™.

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[5.67]

Anthony Easton: Such exquisite, isolating melancholy. I try really hard to be ironic, or cynical, or dismissive of this, and I just can’t. I know why you would hate it, but for me, it’s been a shitty year, and this summer I’ve been really sad, and it matches the mood of failed expectations so well — I cannot even tell what the vocals are saying really, and it doesn’t even matter. I will be overrating it, but sometimes you fall in love with that which helps you make it through the night. 
[8]

Brad Shoup: Nice of Mr. Iver to lay it out plain: the world is, like, so much bigger than you or I (or you). Fittingly, the track goes for stillness, not magnificence, but ends up a dragged-out mewl, a suppuration twinned with monotonous fusion sax. The guitar picking twinkles pleasantly in the mix, and the track has great chill factor. There’s ultimately nothing humble, however, in the wide-eyed presentation. At least the Floyd brought their ponderance like rock stars.
[6]

Josh Langhoff: Nice drumming, I guess. Justin Vernon seems like an upstanding Wisconsin homesteader, but his fans speak a different language, or are ruled by different physical laws, or something. I learn from Pitchfork that “Holocene” is a “virtuosic vocal performance”, when in fact Vernon sounds like Peter Gabriel trapped in a cistern. Christianity Today loves his “rich soundscapes” and impressionist poetry, his “palpable vulnerability and reliance on love’s redemptive power”, but I’m pretty sure they hear that stuff everywhere, and I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t move me even if Vernon suddenly learned to enunciate. “Hydroponics lifestyle” mag Rosebud says the Bon Iver album makes you “stop what you’re doing and just let your jaw hang” — well, that makes sense. Teen Vogue says the album’s “incredible”, if you can believe it. Most endearing is my wife’s fraternal magazine Pan Pipes, which called the album “a recommended listen if you’re looking for something new and relaxing”, but did complain that the song “Wash” is “a bit too much at times”, with “many things going on at once”. I eagerly await their feature on K-Pop.
[3]

Alfred Soto: Sadness without cause. Syllables without words. Vowels without consonants. With without without.
[4]

B Michael Payne: I hated this song for so long because it reminded me (and still does) of an 90s adult contemporary song that I just could not place. I very recently placed it; “Holocene” is this song. (Go ahead, click over and put it on while you finish out this blurb.) I don’t think the two songs are even in the same key or have an extremely similar chord structure, but I think they fit together well in an overall ‘feeling/ambience’ way, which is what music — Bon Iver’s music, especially — excels at. It’s not particularly original to compare Bon Iver, Bon Iver to Steve Winwood, et al., but lack of originality has never lessened truth. Since I grew up listening almost exclusively to the highest points of adult contemporary from the 70s, 80s, and 90s, I absolutely love the latest Bon Iver album, and “Holocene” in particular. Having placed its sonic reference, I can commit fully to my affection for its somewhat beige-y dulcet tones.
[8]

Jonathan Bogart: Come on, Bon, you know you can get a placing on Pitchfork’s 2011 Best-Of without cluttering up the singles marketplace, right?
[5]

Jonathan Bradley: Apart from a very select few tracks — most obviously “Skinny Love” — I almost never engage with Bon Iver as anything but an album act. Listening to “Holocene” in isolation draws its static beauty into focus a little, sharpening details like the muted handclaps and shifting bass that I’d previously disregarded. Happily, the song is strong enough that teasing out these threads make it more enjoyable, not less.
[8]

Katherine St Asaph: Live-blogging my first experience with solo Bon Iver (no joke): [0:01] Put a bird on it! On the introductory background nothing, that is. There’s also either rainfall or static. [0:25] Enter acoustic guitars, prairie pads and marimbas. Half-hazy childhood memories are getting a targeted massage. [0:44] The voice of authenticity trickles down like rain from the rafters. Make no mistake; it is a trickle. [1:02] The falsettist says “fuck”! This is called “contrast” or “juxtaposition,” maybe even “irony.” [1:07] Look. I’m not opposed to this sort of music. Miriam Stockley’s “Perfect Day” always brings me to swooning nostalgic tears. But her words were distinct and her melody haunting. Lying back in the treble clef is not enough to haunt. [1:31] The piano and sweep that enters here could be haunting, if Justin nixed the noodling guitar. [2:00] That’s the problem. Bon Iver hasn’t decided whether he’s going for sparse or lush, so he lets his acoustica pitter on hoping that signifiers can accomplish what the structure won’t. [2:16] He knows to use silence after the chorus and percussion loops, but again, that guitar is like an anchor keeping the track in the calm, tensionless center of the water. Everything else is sonic flotsam. [3:09] Is Bon Iver categorically opposed to soaring? Any lift in emotion, any breakthrough? I want to mail him a dozen better-executed albums, in packages rigged as jack-in-a-boxes so he learns what surprise is. [3:55] Like this chorus. People will call these lyrics meaningful, but he delivers “I can see for miles, miles, miles” in the awed tone of staring at a 64×64-pixel GIF of a mountaintop. Sonic variation wouldn’t compete with these words; it’d enable them. [4:15] Unearned placid stretch. [5:15] Unchanged repetition of the chorus, at the five-minute mark no less. [5:45] The end. Six minutes, almost zero impact.
[4]

Jer Fairall: Damn shame to have music this pretty spoiled by a voice this lousy.
[5]