Bon Iver - For Emma, Forever Ago

Bon Iver - For Emma, Forever Ago
February 19, 2008
Jagjaguwar/4AD
Score: 8.9

This my excavation
And today is Kumran
Everything that happens
Is from now on
This is pouring rain
This is paralyzed

Catharsis. What is bottled up must eventually pour out. How this emotional purging occurs differs with every individual. For some, screaming into a pillow suffices. For others, a good cry will do. And for those whose woes cannot be remedied by the aforementioned solutions, there's always hibernation.

For Justin Vernon, seemingly endless personal turmoil culminates in 3 months of seclusion in a Northwestern Wisconsin cabin. Do not be fooled, this is not evasive action. Vernon does not hope to circumvent the issues plaguing him. He seeks to rather plunge into them headfirst in an attempt to unravel the coils of his past.

Whatever could it be that has brought me to this loss?

It becomes evident from the dulcet strums ushering the opener Flume in that this is no ordinary man-and-a-guitar endeavor; this is an intensely therapeutic journey. Armed with no more than aged instruments and his irresistible falsetto, Bon Iver puts forth 9 of the most haunting ditties to surface in years. Vernon wails atop deceptively dense arrangements and for 37 brief minutes, listeners lose their notion of time and place. His ruminations reveal themselves one by one with lines such as "I've been twisting to the sun I needed to replace" creating their own contexts within our lives. We are immersed in Vernon's woes; much like he was surrounded by notes lining every inch of his father's northern retreat. Walls were no longer confines. They'd become portals, snapshots he could observe and deconstruct in retrospect.

Contrary to popular belief, this is not folk. The ambience, the stirring, layered high-pitched vocals, the towering crescendo that closes out The Wolves (Act I and II). Imposing a genre on these songs is selling them short. Bon Iver is quite simply art for and from the soul. It wanders but never aimlessly. It's subdued but remains deliberate throughout. It's introspective but never intrusive. It's painfully personal but somehow universal.

I keep throwing it down two-hundred at a time
It's hard to find it when you knew it

Aurally living the depths of this man's troubles is no frivolous privilege either. It is profound and resonant. It crawls beneath your skin and tugs at you from the inside. Unlike with your typical troubadour bearing his heart on his sleeve, much is left to the imagination here. Vernon has laid the groundwork and it is up to the listeners to make sense of the fragments he's presented us with. Despite the vagueness of his writing, it all seems eerily familiar. So much so that before the chilling Skinny Love is over, you'll be reaching for those impossibly high notes as well, asking yourself "...then who the hell was I?"

This is not a case of an artist intending to play this way, this is him needing to do so. These oddly infectious numbers beg to be played repeatedly. Harrowing tales of life and loss are drilled into our consciousness, lingering for that additional second the average record would not. Such an accomplished debut is rare in this business. Do For Emma justice and listen to it over and over. Let Vernon's life echo yours. Escape into that bubble of solitary reverence if only for half an hour...and then once more.

This is not the sound of a new man or crispy realization
It's the sound of the unlocking and the lift away