Swooning to the Strangeness of Bon Iver

On Sunday night, at a quarter to nine, a batch of carefully dressed Brooklynites lined up in front of a multipurpose space in Red Hook. It was cold out, pitch-black and starry. Couples shivered as the wind stung their cheeks; they reached into the pockets of their wool coats and Canada Goose parkas, unfolding their printed tickets to Bon Iver. It was the second night of the band’s sold-out five-night run at Pioneer Works, a brick warehouse space with high ceilings and tall windows that describes itself as a “center for research and experimentation in contemporary culture.” (Justin Vernon, the principal member of Bon Iver, is on the board.) Outside, in the garden, a clutch of people huddled over a fire. Inside, the venue was crammed to gridlock. The room holds eighteen hundred people if you pack them like anchovies, and the crowd was near uniform: white thirty-somethings, sparkling with neurosis, sensible and keen.