Fall Creek Boys Choir Explained

Fall Creek Boys Choir
Cover:Fall Creek Boys Choir (Front Cover).png
Type:single
Artist:James Blake and Bon Iver
Album:Enough Thunder and James Blake (Deluxe Edition)
Released:29 August 2011
Recorded:2011
Length:4:33
Label:Polydor
Chronology:James Blake
Prev Title:Order / Pan
Prev Year:2011
Next Title:A Case of You
Next Year:2011

"Fall Creek Boys Choir" is a song by James Blake and Bon Iver, released as the first single from Blake's Enough Thunder EP. The song was premiered on BBC Radio 1 and released on the internet on August 24, 2011.[1] It was released commercially as a single on August 29, 2011. The song extensively uses multi-layered vocals, auto-tune and vocoders.

The song's title is a reference to Fall Creek, Wisconsin, where Justin Vernon, Bon Iver's frontman, owns the recording studio April Base Studios. The artwork is a picture of a fox's head carved on wood, which is located in one of the booths of Dave's Fox Head Tavern in Iowa City, IA.

Critical reception

Steve Horowitz of PopMatters praised the song and gave it eight out of ten stars, stating, "The two work in completely different genres. Blake and dubstep has its roots in urban electronic dance music. Bon Iver’s recordings show an affinity for rural folk traditions and harmony vocalizations that recall the open air of his remote Wisconsin home. But the results are in with a single called "Fall Creek Boys Choir" that sounds like someone welded the two sounds together with a blow torch. That's a compliment. While the Frankenstein-style creation may not resemble the pure music of each other's past, it lives and breathes."[2]

Notes and References

  1. Web site: Listen: Bon Iver and James Blake Collaborate . . Larry . Fitzmaurice . Amy . Phillips . 2011-08-24 . 2016-05-09.
  2. Web site: James Blake and Bon Iver: Fall Creek Boys Choir . . Steve . Horowitz . 2011-09-21 . 2016-05-09.