A beautiful fever dream of love songs and melancholy
recorded in the white-out Winter of Wisconsin, Bon
Iver’s debut album, For Emma, Forever Ago,
is a lingering love note of perfectly lilting instrumental
phrases and heat-damaged, soul-bearing song writing.
Justin Vernon penned and recorded the album after
his band Eau Claire, WI band, DeYarmond Edison, disintegrated
and all the solo acoustic guitar work and multi-layered
vocal recordings sound like a single mind splintering
into a fully conscious and differentiated musical group.
There’s nothing quite like a person harmonizing
with themselves for nearly forty minutes to establish
a sturdy foundation of isolation and abandonment. Each
track begins unsure of itself, like the antisocial
new kid edging his way deeper and deeper into the party
until all inhibitions are abandoned.
Album opener, “Flume” is a beautiful,
sad little slice of a song: all buzzing guitar strings
attempting to find their balance and a whispery, jumbled
poetic lyrics lamenting rope burns and lake swimming. “Lump
Sum” chugs along in linear bursts of lullaby
guitar strums, leading nicely into the first side’s
standout track, “Skinny Love.” The song
collects miniscule memories, like the haunting image
of our narrator “staring at the sink of blood
and crushed veneer.” The soulful, regretful vocals
paired with bare-bones percussion muted to the point
of barely registering (almost like slight pressure
pops in your eardrums), plays like TV on the Radio
channeling Reel to Real-era Arthur Lee.
The albums latter half tends to dramatically veer
off into a-rhythmic, cathartic breakdowns. “The
Wolves (Act I and II)” culminates in a spiraling
horn blast-off, while “Team” is basically
the ruefully electric continuation of the enigmatic
track “Creature Fear” eventually burning
itself out over rusty snares, dwindling tremolo arpeggios
and out of breath whistles. By the time Vernon’s
mush-mouthed and melding the words “for Emma” and “forever” into
one divine monosyllable, it’s hard not to get
caught up in his streaming pure emotional downpour.
Bon Iver delivers mopiness with an underlying wellspring
of hope and the analogue warmth with which Vernon’s
prepared every track and turned every abstract phrasing
inside-out will have listeners hooked from the first
tentative note.
Favorite Track: “Creature Fear”
