Weekly Release Spotlight: Bon Iver
Posted on 2/18/2008
Bon Iver
For Emma, Forever Ago
[Jagjaguwar]
There must be a correlation between how lonely an album sounds and how removed from society its creator was during the recording process. There's no other explanation. This is the epitome of solitary music. It's the kind of music where unless the restless crowd at a bar or your friends in the backseat are dead silent, it will lack the impact it has when listening to it on your lonesome. Justin Vernon secluded himself to the woods of Eau Claire, Wisconsin with no intention of coming out known as Bon Iver, blog-hyped musical sensation. It's obvious just from listening to the first few desolate moments of For Emma, Forever Ago – this is simply the sound of someone letting no other person or man made entity get in the way of his music except for himself, his thoughts, and his cabin in the forest.
It's very dangerous calling an album perfect. In this situation, however, with an album so pure and unaffected by the bombardment of absurd chaos that is the average American life, it would be more dangerous to call it flawed. It in no way can be called as such. The acoustic guitar strums sound like they're happily smothered by crackling leaves and branches and the varied ambient flourishes don't congest the delicate sparseness but rather add to it. The sounds are naturalistic in an unprecedented way – the record doesn't come off as dry or stale – it quivers and tousles in the wind like a weeping willow with a heart. Vernon's isolated setting isn't just the frame for his canvas; it is his canvas. He became one with his surroundings, and the music becomes his experience, not an extension thereof.
More so than any other aspect of this album, though, this spotlight could not conclude without discussing Vernon's simultaneously haunting and heavenly voice. His falsetto swims in layers through the driving “Lump Sum” and his gruff croon yearns on "Skinny Love," but both are equally moving. By the time both voices are multi-tracked (along with a subtle vocoder!) in the sing-along "The Wolves (Act I and II)," you'll be amazed For Emma is not even halfway over yet, as you've already heard a world of pain and love inside 17 minutes. But the disc soldiers on in an unrelenting yet inviting way, until the gorgeous "Re: Stacks" leaves you in a breathless calm you never want to escape. After your first listen (and trust me, there will be more), it becomes unquestionably clear why Bon Iver translates to "Good Winter." And in Minnesota, we need as much as we can get to find a reason to recall any winter fondly. Bon Iver is 2008's reason.
Stream: Bon Iver - Skinny Love
Written by Chris Polley, Radio K volunteer and host of Now Like Photographs.