Music Review: Bon Iver - For Emma, Forever Ago

I know I should probably spend some time writing a review for something that has come out in the last month one of these days, but I figure anything that gets me to a write a thought out entry is a good thing. So here's something about a great band.

Let’s talk about Bon Iver, specifically For Emma, Forever Ago.” I have no idea why Bon Iver finally clicked with me, but I’m so happy that it finally happened. I remember having my iPod on shuffle when it just happened to come across “Skinny Lover” and the song was vaguely recognizable, but I hadn’t made a real effort to dig into the album yet so I couldn’t have told you who it was at the time. When it came on I was in the middle of running to a plane that I would end up missing so I didn’t have time to pull out the player and check it out, which made it even more exciting to me as the song went on. I knew that I had a new favorite song, and possibly a favorite band, and I had no idea who it was. When I got around to checking it out, the name didn’t go with the sound at all for me; I had expected something chaotic or noisy for some reason and instead came away with some of the most gracefully layered music I had ever heard.

On the plane I worked my way through the rest of the album and even though the sound was the same, I still needed more time to appreciate every song in the same way as “Skinny Lover.” It’s not a complicated album in terms of composition, but each song needed a different situation or feeling to cling to before it would all come together for me and I could finally get to the core of the painfully meager nine tracks. This made listening to it all the more enjoyable though, I would find myself coming back to the album again and again every few weeks and finding another way to love it.

Apparently the album is about the lead singer, Justin Vernon, dealing with breakup(s) and the entire album has a sense of resignation and passive acceptance, but the songs are not completely caught up in identifying one aspect or feeling so you still get the freedom to explore each song in a unique way. The first track, “Flume”, for instance is about a baby still in the womb and while you could stretch the themes out to relate to the innocence of the unborn child and the lamenting of the pain that is to come, it’s better to take it for what it is and enjoy the picture that Vernon paints with expert precision. You feel comforted in an odd sort of way during the haunting track and eventually I came to realize that the song actually reminds me of a memory that I do not even have, I still can’t get over how weird it felt when I first came to that realization.

Vernon also has a knack for putting you smack in the middle of a situation and bringing you up to speed on the severity of it in almost no time at all, see: “Skinny Lover.” This is the song that would go on my mixtape that I have to make five minutes before the bombs drop and I have to escape down the hatch to my underground shelter where I will be stuck with only a walkman, an endless supply of batteries and one CD. This is the only definite breakup song of the album, the other ones are musing on what comes before and after and how you deal with it, but this is definitely a song of the moment. Vernon acts like the consummate grief victim in the song, going through all the different stages and finally coming to a sort of acceptance. “Come on skinny lover just last the year,” the first line alone is enough to paint the entire picture, Vernon is pleading not just with the girl, but with the relationship itself all while finally seeing that it will be over by the second stanza. Vernon’s normally angelic voice flies into a justified frenzy as he retraces all the missteps that led them to this point and you can’t help but begin to make the same pleas he does to an unfeeling and immovable force.

It’s probably pretty clear by now that I could go on talking about this album for a long time, and I probably will to myself and in other excerpts that I’ll leave out in this “review,” but that would be pointless because I’ve gotten my point across by now. This is a fantastic album, the kind of album that you listen to at 3 in the morning and suddenly feel the urge to write about. The feelings that Vernon stirs up with the sparsest of sounds are as powerful as the music is subdued and it while it doesn’t plead for your attention like so much other music does these days you will still find yourself inevitably drawn to it as it slowly carves the smallest of crevices inside your heart for itself.