2. Bon Iver

I can see for miles, miles, miles. Leave the parenthetical coasts and strike out for the continent. Consider the wide expanse and the places that unfurl. Minnesota, Wisconsin. Michicant. Lisbon, OH. Winnum, TX. Calgary. On Bon Iver's masterful self-titled album, Justin Vernon sets his earthworn gaze across it all.

With an album that was immediately hailed as a staggering achievement, it is already difficult to contextualize Vernon's second American masterpiece and the musical transformation that came with it. Vernon travels beyond the unconventional and folk-riddled province of the upper Midwest, the sometimes spare and insular scrawl of For Emma, Forever Ago. He goes continental. Expansive. While his songs retain their intimacy, Vernon refashions a realm of Americana, folk, and pop music that, candidly, few listeners could have imagined and even fewer artists could have conceived.

Put simply, Vernon's recontextualization is about textures. The feel of things. The feel of words, instruments, and sounds. The way a song moves, hangs in the air, crystallizes, then breaks apart. Like a Mercator projection, some uber-produced records lose their contours and become flat and one-dimensional. Here, the music is gilded with shapes and edges, a topographical foray into resplendent tangibleness.

The staccato drum beats of "Perth." The sinewed guitars of "Minnesota, WI." The coin-dropped chinging of "Michicant." The deep-toned vocals of "Hinnom, TX." The gentle key-bounce of "Wash." The epic pulse of "Calgary." The songs, all of them so striking in their emotional connection, cut wide swaths across the open trails of your heart.

On the final track "Beth/Rest," Vernon becomes the indie-rock Peter Cetera, taking his emotional grandeur to its logical extreme. The song arcs out into soft-rock orbits, spinning off lush vocal effects, piano runs, glittery guitar solos, and sax interludes. The song teeters at the edge of overkill were it not so good, so heartfelt. Some listeners have cringed at the purported sappiness, as if Peabo Bryson were manning the soundboard. To that, I offer my condolences for missing out on a potent piece of populism.

Recently, a fawning critic said that the boombox scene in Say Anything has been saving itself for "Holocene." Under the weight of those and future expectations, where does Bon Iver go from here? If you have been listening, of course, the answer to that question is simple: anywhere he wants.