Bon Iver - For Emma, Forever Ago

 
Most readers will by now know the story behind Bon Iver’s For Emma, Forever Ago. But for the benefit of those who don’t - and since it’s so intrinsic to the creation and success of the album, as well as being a compelling tale in its own right - here it is again.

A man (Justin Vernon, of Eau Claire, Wisconsin) breaks up with former band; then splits with his girlfriend; then finds out he has a liver disease. Triply troubled, he heads out to a remote forest in North-East Wisconsin, armed with a heavy heart, a guitar, some rudimentary equipment and an angelic falsetto. He doesn’t plan on recording anything - just chopping some wood, hunting deer (for food) and playing some guitar. But once ensconced in his father’s log cabin, he sets about recording a set of songs that will eventually make up one the most beloved independent albums of 2008.

The reasons for the album's success are manifold, but have mostly to do with the way in which Vernon’s Thoreau-esque modus operandi manages to seep into every pore of the record, lending his sparse, acoustic songs extra layers of sequestration and loneliness. Listening to For Emma…it's easy to imagine snow gently falling around the cabin and wolves sniffing at the cold night air as Vernon, illuminated by the flickering flames of his wood fire, serenades them from inside.

Feeding snugly into the current vogue for hushed Americana (see Iron & Wine, Bonny Prince Billy, Lambchop, Fleet Foxes), the record has a natural openness and vulnerability - assets exacerbated by Vernon’s otherworldly falsetto, which acts as both subtle textural embellishment (hums, chants, softly repeated words) and awesome rallying cry to his strange convalescence. When multi-tracked - which is fairly often - that voice is nothing short of transcendent.

The stunning “Flume” gets things underway. It’s a fairly normal song for the first twenty seconds or so, until Vernon’s voice kicks in and the finger plucks of his guitar are smudged with quietly dissonant electronics, creating something at once intimate and eerie. “Lump Sum” starts with a nebulous eddy of Vernon’s multi-layered vocals and moves through a strangely celestial soundscape of strums, foot-taps and swirling background noises, while “Skinny Love,” one of the record’s many indubitable highlights, sees a decisive change of mood as Vernon spits out rancorous lines like: “I told you to be patient / I told you to be fine…now all our love is wasted? / And who the hell was I?”

The series of simple, acoustic sketches continue, intensified in different ways; by collapsing drums at the end of the gorgeous, beguiling “The Wolves Acts I & II”; with electronics and post-production flourishes (such as the added horns on "For Emma"); and, of course, with those swelling multi-vocals. Cryptic lyrics also heighten the feeling of pagan strangeness, nonsensical lines like “Only love is all maroon” vying with striking, poetic imagery such as “staring at the sink of blood and crushed veneer”.

Such is the extraordinary power and completeness of For Emma…that by the end you find yourself almost wishing that there won’t be a follow up, that this could be a perfect one-off, an act never to be repeated. But those are purely selfish thoughts; the reality is that Justin Vernon’s intriguing story has only just begun.