In MKE Music Rewind we revisit notable Milwaukee music that was released before Milwaukee Record became a thing in April 2014. This week: Volcano Choir’s Repave, from 2013.
As a Wisconsin-based music fan, I have a terrible confession to make: I’ve never really cared for Bon Iver.
There. I’ve said it. I certainly don’t loathe Justin Vernon’s long-running indie-folk / indie-whatever project, it’s just that I’ve never connected with it. I’ve never connected with 2007’s seminal For Emma, Forever Ago, not with follow-up Bon Iver, Bon Iver, and definitely not with 22, A Million or I, I. No, the only Vernon project that has ever knocked my socks off is Volcano Choir.
Maybe it’s the direct local connection. Volcano Choir began its life in 2005 as a collaboration between Vernon and Milwaukee’s own Collections Of Colonies Of Bees. The group’s 2009 debut, Unmap, was a wild-and-wooly long-distance experiment, the work of a band that wasn’t quite yet a band. But with 2013’s Repave, Volcano Choir came into its own and delivered a record that was as explosive and powerful as the band’s name suggested.
I reviewed Repave for The A.V. Club in September 2013, seven months before the launch of Milwaukee Record. Revisiting that review today, I’m A.) shocked that I’m not embarrassed by something I wrote nearly 12 years ago, and B.) still fully on board with my A- rating. Here’s a big chunk of what I wrote:
That’s not to say Repave is entirely free of the Bon Iver sound; the shadow of 2011’s Bon Iver looms especially large on the record. Opener “Tiderays” borrows the quiet bombast of “Holocene,” the sparkling “Comrade” wouldn’t sound out of place next to “Calgary,” and Vernon’s lyrics remain as inscrutable as ever. Still, it would be wrong to classify Repave as anything other than a Volcano Choir album. Vernon’s longtime compatriots are largely to thank for that, especially guitarist Chris Rosenau and drummer Jon Mueller, who provide the album with a jittery nervous system and a muscular, volatile pulse, respectively. The sum of the group’s power can be found on the jaw-dropping “Byegone,” a barely controlled explosion of a song that scorches everything before and after it. The rest of Repave is no less triumphant, however, and resonates with a brotherly vibe of old friends taking stock—the defiant gang vocals on “Acetate” (“But I won’t beg for you on acetate / I won’t crawl on you to validate”) and the inclusion of a Charles Bukowski reading during the outro of the wounded-but-hopeful “Alaskans.”
“In the past,” I concluded, “Volcano Choir may have been an expectations-minimizing, second-stage Justin Vernon act; with Repave, it comes tantalizingly close to becoming the main event.”
It didn’t become Vernon’s main event, of course; Volcano Choir never released another album, and the group’s final Repave show took place at Turner Hall in December 2014. Bon Iver’s 2025 release, Sable, Fable, has received glowing reviews. CoCoBees are as strong as ever, too, and their new music is fantastic.
Still, Repave is a stunner all these years later. And yeah, “Byegone” scorches everything before and after it.
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