How I learned to stop worrying and just be happy a new Bon Iver album is out

Last night I was watching the AFL Footy Show's grand final episode because I'm a glutton for punishment (and I was at my folks house and it's what we do). Anyway, anyone with a passing interest in that show will know the grand final edition always features the "Player Review", where they get various players from various clubs to perform choreographed dance numbers to songs either popular in 2016 or old faves that the old audience who still watches The Footy Show can relate to.

It featured a whole lot of terrible dancing to some of this year's most popular mainstream singles, the names of which I can't even remember they were all so heinously boring. It was kinda funny (which is the point), watching footy players dance badly while mostly-naked women dance around them to make sure you don't pay too close attention to how awful everything that's going on is.

What does this boring anecdote have to do with Bon Iver's new album, 22, A Million, you ask? Well besides making me sound like an elitest wanker (I am), it was stressing me out (and my partner, who just looked at me in disgust each time a new song came on), and provides some backstory into why having a new Bon Iver album to listen to on this Friday morning is such welcome relief from the noise of 2016's mainstream music. It's no different to every year - mainstream pop gets more generic, more formulaic, while alongside it plenty of fantastic, exciting new music is released by other artists. Of course no one makes me listen to minstream music, and by and large I don't, but hearing it on display as it was last night was just a telling reminder of why I don't.

And it made waking up this morning to Bon Iver's new 10-track release all the more welcome.

Bon Iver's new album isn't groundbreaking (it's filled with auto-tune, like the most pop thing of 2016, but also basically Vernon's way of saying "fuck you" to pop music).

It isn't the best album of all time.

But it is a new Bon Iver album. Made with the impeccable talent that lies within Justin Vernon and friends. And it's really great.

And that's how I learned to stop worrying and just be happy there's a new Bon Iver album out.

Stream it below: