Holocene

“Holocene” is named for the current geological epoch — the last 12,000 years of relatively stable climate during which all of human civilization has happened. Justin Vernon uses the word as scale, against which he places a single small winter night and the realization that he is not the center of the story he is inside of.

The song moves in shimmering guitar figures and Vernon’s upper-register falsetto, which on this record he used like an instrument in its own right. The refrain — “and at once I knew I was not magnificent” — is not defeat. It is relief. It is the sentence you tell yourself on the drive home when you finally stop pretending you’re doing anything other than what you’re doing.