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Bon Iver |
| For Emma, Forever Ago |
| Jagjaguwar | 2007 | Album |
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The cold of winter is approaching, light your fireplace, curl up on the couch and press play, for this may be the album that you have been waiting all year for.
The purposely misspelled French moniker Bon Iver translates appropriately to “good winter”. The music of Bon Iver is the offspring of singer-songwriter Justin Vernon’s mind. Sounds and words that spilled from his head after he ditched pieces of his life in North Carolina and packed a few necessities for a lonesome journey to his fathers hunting lodge in Wisconsin.
The four forlorn months he spent there - filled with cold and snow, hunting and gathering and basically living like a modern day Eskimo-like Thoreau - were only supposed to be a period of therapeutic self-rediscovery. Thankfully, Vernon brought his guitar with him; otherwise we may have been without one of the most poignant musical soundscapes of the year.
This is one of the albums that will remind you why you search music blogs and scan rock magazines daily.
For Emma, Forever Ago, as the title subtly suggests, is a record born of a broken heart. Acoustic guitar is Vernon’s garment of despair, with it he floods us with the emotions that challenged and changed him in what was a relatively short time. Dark and desolate yet hopeful, the album transcends as a modern folk record that grows and builds to transform the listener as well.
This is sincere art that tackles daily human struggles and makes them bearable.
The album opens aptly with “Flume”. We are introduced to Vernon’s world of gloom, “I am my mothers only one, it’s enough”. Soft guitar strumming and swirling echoes haunt and prepare the listener for the honest complexities of the remainder of the record. From here the album transitions to the sweet tempo of “Lump Sum”, another beautiful track with eerie electronic undertones.
If you aren’t hooked by this point, “Skinny Love” will reel you in for sure. Destined to be an underground hit, it will dance through your head – spinning with pleasure and pain- as you recall lost loves…somehow sweetly. The “my, my, my, my” lyric line is oddly powerful in its fervor. And the entire album has this same force. Even if you don’t comprehend the lyrics, you will know that Vernon has recorded an album full of truths.
A broken heart and winter weather, partnered with loneliness and an acoustic guitar is not just the circumstances in which the album was recorded, it is the album. On the closer “re:Stacks” Vernon sings, “The fountain in the front yard is rusted out/All my love was down/In a frozen ground”. And we understand. Somehow we know this man – we were welcomed into his cold cabin for four lonely months as he mended his broken heart, yet it is he who comforts us. For that we are grateful. It is a relief to stumble upon an album that is pure passion, heart and soul. It will remind you why you love music.
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| Nick Greto |
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