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Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problemsFix Now →Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteDriver Scan →In Leah Lu’s April 11, 2025 review for Rolling Stone Australia, Bon Iver’s SABLE, fABLE moves from the reckoning of its three-song SABLE opening toward the greater openness and hope of the nine additional fABLE tracks. Lu’s central point is that the lightness does not make the album emotionally safe: love offers a way forward, but the possibility of change and heartbreak remains.
From atonement to openness
Lu frames SABLE, fABLE as a connected emotional movement rather than two unrelated releases. She hears the three songs of SABLE as introspective and concerned with reckoning and atonement; the nine tracks of fABLE shift toward release, greater lightness, and hope. The contrast draws on a familiar Bon Iver pattern of introspection and transformation, while Lu’s emphasis is on the change in emotional posture across this particular album.
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That turn is not presented as a clean escape from sadness. The review treats new love as a source of possibility, not a guarantee: questions about whether a person can change, and whether love will last, leave the optimism exposed to the risk of heartbreak.
How the music signals the shift
“Short Story” and “Everything Is Peaceful Love”
Lu describes “Short Story,” the opening of fABLE, as just under two minutes long, built from familiar synths, brass, and vocoders. In her reading, the brief track works as a transition: Vernon seems to let go of the musical devices that have obscured or complicated the feeling. It leads seamlessly into “Everything Is Peaceful Love,” where ascending harmonies meet a metronome-like beat. Lu calls that song the thesis single for fABLE, a concise statement of the section’s open-hearted direction.
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A more triumphant pop palette
Across much of fABLE, Lu hears resolutions in a major key, propulsive percussion, and pedal steel supporting more triumphant, anthemic pop melodies. These are the review’s descriptions of how the newer songs feel and sound, not a claim that Bon Iver has abandoned the textures associated with earlier work. Synths and vocoders remain part of the palette; the change lies in how the review hears those sounds serving a more outward, hopeful mood.
Love as hope, not certainty
The album’s optimism is most compelling in Lu’s account because it does not pretend that love removes uncertainty. “Everything Is Peaceful Love” gives fABLE its affirmative center, but the emotional arc still asks whether a person can feel differently and whether the new feeling can endure. The result is not uncomplicated happiness; it is a willingness to risk openness after a period of inwardness.
Rank #2
Lu reports that Vernon described fABLE at a live On Being podcast taping in Brooklyn as a “controlled burn,” chronicling the “drama and odyssey of giving into love and loving.” The phrase captures the tension in her reading: surrender may be transformative, but it is still a process with drama and stakes.
What the review hears in the lyrics
Lu sets “I would like that feeling gone,” from “Things Behind Things Behind Things,” against the later question “Can I feel another way?” in “Rhythmn.” The movement between those lines gives the review a lyrical shorthand for the album’s emotional progression: first the wish to escape a painful feeling, then the possibility of experiencing something different.
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Rank #3
Her closing interpretation is that Vernon seems ready to leave a cycle of sadness and heartbreak and “walk into the light.” That image is hopeful, but the review’s larger argument keeps it grounded: stepping toward love is not the same as knowing what comes next.
Collaborators named in the review
Lu identifies Jim-E Stack as producer and points to several guest contributions that broaden the album’s vocal world.
Rank #4
- “Day One”: Dijon and Flock of Dimes.
- “I’ll Be There” and “If Only I Could Wait”: Danielle Haim.
- Across the album: Kacy Hill and Jacob Collier are heard throughout, as the review describes it.
These names add context to Lu’s account of fABLE as a more open and collaborative-feeling chapter, without displacing Vernon’s emotional journey at its center.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Verdict: a brighter chapter that keeps its vulnerability
Lu’s review finds SABLE, fABLE persuasive as an arc: the inward reckoning of SABLE gives way to the brighter, more anthemic songs of fABLE, yet uncertainty stays in the frame. The light arrives not as a cure for heartbreak but as the possibility of loving despite it. Read the full review at Rolling Stone Australia.
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