I'll try to abbreviate, as best I can, the biographical details of Justin Vernon's For Emma, Forever Ago--as I'm sure you're already familiar. The liver illness...the dissolution of a once successful band...the end of a longtime affair...the resulting winter spent isolated in a remote Wisconson cabin.
Bon Iver's debut album is the closest musical equivalent we have to a modern day Walden. A personal narrative so narrow--so specific--in scope, it has no option but to distill itself into the universal. For Emma, Forever Ago is an album whose lyrics are imbued by Justin Vernon's preturnaturally expressive falsetto with the emotional veracity--and stark, simple clarity--of the high romantics. The heartbreakingness--to coin a term--of lines like "Go find another lover," "Who will love you?," "I'm not really like this," "I am my mother's only one / It's enough" is exponentially enhanced by the quality of their performance.
I have to go back to Sufjan Stevens' Illinois, to 2005, to find a record that made me feel anything close to the depth of feeling that For Emma, Forever Ago has. This record affirms everything holy I've ever found in music; at the right moment, the proper combination of one voice, one guitar, a little bit of silence and the unadulterated truth is all the magic one could ever hope to find in this world--a fleeting solace from the cold.
"For Emma" (a capella)
"Skinny Love" (live on Jools Holland)
"Blindsided" (live)
"Flume" (live)
Here's to another good winter, mates.
Here's to Bon Iver.
3 comments:
Good choice, sir. I should of guessed this!!!
This album hits me like a ton of bricks. Melancholy bricks.
here here old chap
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