BON IVER WEAVE AND WOO - Glastonbury Park Stage

After a forty-minute soundcheck peppered with embarrassing "check one's and twos" that the crowd rightly took the piss out of, one would have forgiven the couple of thousand people for being even more offhand towards these scruffy American's when they finally took up their positions on the Park's rather intimate stage. Not so. These disciples had waited patiently, one comes to understand, because acoustic and electronic perfection is so central to Bon Iver's genre defying style.

Alex Pienaar, our antipodean music editor had described them amply in his review of their Sydney show, however, one was hardly to pass up the opportunity of seeing Bon Iver in the flesh and coming to ones own conclusions. So here is a brief review for those still unfamiliar with a band that is slowly but surely gaining converts around the globe.

Yes from the outset its falsetto, its folky and all three part harmony - but its also electronic, scratchy, dirty and sensual. The guitar department is very unique and effects oriented - unusual timbres and layers being played off between the rather young "Mikey" (Michael Noyce) and the band's singer/songwriter Justin Vernon.

The two live percussionists Sean Carey and Matthew McCaughan also play other instruments (bass, piano and other electronic percussion), often all at the same time! This makes photographing the "action" quite difficult as sublime crescendo's build from unlikely places... not your standard rock and roll. Indeed the soundscape is often independent of the action on stage - which is unsettling but all part of the drama that is Bon Iver. We are meant to see it in our heads this impressionistic stuff - just as they do.

So this is a sound that is not kitsch or derivative, but rather organic, chaotic, meandering, unpredictable, subtle and also harsh at times. Its as if Crosby Stills and Nash were given ecstacy and left in a studio with Kraftwerk or Bryan Eno as producer and told to make sounds out of a whole new bunch of toys. Almost Joy Division in its irreverence to technology or tradition. LIke Hot Chip without the computers.

It's not retro - it just is. Although some of the structures end up being a bit samey from song to song, perhaps the next album will see Bon Iver shift gear into even more ambitious territory. This reviewer hopes so.