Hot Wax: Bon Iver’s For Emma, Forever Ago

The full version of this review appears in the pages of TRACER Magazine.

Sometimes an album is more the recording of a cataclysmic life event than an amalgamation of in-studio bursts of creativity. The much written-about, much discussed Bon Iver debut, For Emma, Forever Ago, is just that. Just as you’ve probably heard, Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon holed himself up in a cabin in the remote wilderness of Northwestern Wisconsin and lived a simple existence, mostly for the purpose of creating an album to express his emotions over a recent break with his band. It’s also been said that there was a romantic break in the back story of how this album was created, but either way, Bon Iver’s first album is a stunner, the documentation of a life experience that makes you reel backwards with its blinding honesty and emotion-filled simplicity.

Just as a painter hopes to solicit an intense reaction, either negative or positive, Justin Vernon has accomplished in his first attempt what many musicians spend entire careers trying to achieve. It’s clear that by stripping away the modern amenities and unnecessary distractions of everyday life, he has tapped into a wellspring of music-making that is adept at making the listener’s arm hair stand on end, the raw emotion of the subtext taking its seemingly effortless toll. The album is not for an impatient ear, as the songs often have a very soft sound and a gentle tempo. At the very least, most listeners will be baffled, searching for reasons why such minimalist lyrics and music can be so affective. From the first track “Flume,” with its sparse guitar strumming and subtle, yet haunting, ambient sounds, it’s clear that For Emma, Forever Ago deserves some attention. The harmony of Vernon’s vocal tracks woven together on “Flume” provide instant imagery of a quiet, snow capped hillside, with the blue and orange sights and smoky smells of a cabin lit up with only the glow around the hearth. “Flume” is so tragically beautiful and timeless, it is by far the most emotionally affecting song on this album.

There is an immediate allusion to choral harmonies on “Lump Sum,” before the soft and pulsing rhythm guitar moves the song back into the realm of modern songwriting from the ethereal, shapelessness of the ghostly intro. “Skinny Love” is everyone’s favorite, the song Bon Iver performed at the Austin City Limits Music festival, generating plenty of interest in the video of this performance and in Bon Iver in general. It’s a soulful, pretty, lovesick song, with only Vernon’s voice and his guitar as the genesis. This is commonplace throughout the album. The lyrics solicit the feeling that a heartfelt expression of betrayal and/or romantic disappointment is inherent between the lines and give it an overall anguished tone. “The Wolves (Act I And II)” has an intriguing seed, beginning with only hand or finger taps on the body of the guitar.

The troubling aspect of Vernon’s vocals on “The Wolves” is his penchant for stretching his breathy falsetto to the genre bending point of sounding a smidge like an R&B singer (his harmonies here could easily be mistaken for D’Angelo’s), though it does give the song a new originality, and the choral-esque harmonies are a welcome change from the usual suspects in singer-songwriter minimalist vocals. You can almost hear the winter wind howling along with Vernon’s voice, and with all of the ingenious ways he uses it to provide original nuance to For Emma, Forever Ago (listen to it on your headphones or in an audio booth for its complex tapestry of sound to become evident), one might guess that he even recorded the wind and added it in for a chillier effect. “For Emma” lightens the mood with its brassy sound and somewhat positive-sounding guitar strumming, and there is an Hawaiian-sounding instrument and a trumpet that provide a bit of sunlight to the otherwise deep, dark, quiet winter of “For Emma, Forever Ago.” Some emotional progression seems to have taken place, if you only assess the tone of this song. The final track, “Re: Stacks,” improves upon the healing felt in “For Emma” and Vernon sounds more content with his surroundings. He iterates a feeling of new beginning, and declares, “this is paradise,” while giving his voice a lilt not heard in the pain of the first several tracks.

This is a true album, in the sense that there is a subject matter, an impetus for creating several songs that are intricately linked by emotion and with inventive modes to evoke imagery of quiet and solitude. There is also the sense that the beginning, middle, and end are all necessary, and a process of discovery and mending are set in motion with the first song, a progression that becomes increasingly clear by the final two songs. This is an album and artistic statement not to be missed, not because everyone is talking about it, rather because you will likely respond to it. Experiencing a natural, physical, and emotional response to an album is probably all Justin Vernon could have asked for.

Amanda Carnes