Justin Vernon and his nine-piece band might have found something worth holding on to.
The NYC crowd, a chipper bunch stuffed into the humid and AC-less United Palace Theatre, seemed to agree. The room was electric, as Vernon lead his eclectic crew through 17 songs, including three encores. The majority of the set-list was pulled from Bon Iver’s recently released self-titled album, but Vernon awarded his faithful following with tracks from 2008′s For Emma, Forever Ago and the Blood Bank EP.
Vernon presided over the stage with a comfortability that was both unassuming and yet completely self-confident. He is not a showman in the same sense as a Dave Matthews or a David Lee Roth. But he was consistently engaging and offered his gratitude to the sold out crowd. At one point he said that he had to blink a few times to make sure the audience was actually real.
