Fans can quit holding their collective breath waiting for any sort of new Bon Iver material. That news comes straight from the mouth of Justin Vernon, who told Grantland that the only planned activity his band has for the near future is his Eaux Claires Music & Arts Festival, and that when he said the group was “winding it down” for a bit in 2012, he meant it. As Vernon puts it, “I definitely care about the Bon Iver thing a lot, but it’s kind of my thing, and there’s only so much time you can spend with yourself before you just become an asshole. So you gotta push it.” Given that Vernon is reportedly tight bros with Kanye West, it’s probably fine to take his word on this one.
In that same interview, Vernon also expresses his regrets about appearing in an ad for Bushmills, saying that while “we were able to finish [my recording studio without borrowing], he didn’t realize a massive ad campaign would be such a corporate affair. As he says,
The problem is that it isn’t just Bushmills. It’s run by a corporation, and you kind of forget that they’re not interested in you or really what you’re doing. They’re interested in your popularity and your reach, and it felt really sickening after a while. Not badmouthing Bushmills the company, but I regret it. I regret it because it wasn’t us and they put my face on a fucking billboard, even though it was a cool billboard and I was with my brother and my sound engineer and we’re buds and we got drunk while we had the photo shoot. I just missed it. I missed the mark on that one and I let it all kind of get to me. It just doesn’t feel right after the fact, you know?
Bon Iver’s last record, Bon Iver, came out in 2011.