Bon Iver - For Emma: Forever Ago (4AD)
5/5
By: Sophie Dodds
BUY DOWNLOADFor Emma: Forever Ago is an album and a story. It is the first solo recording of Justin Vernon, formerly of DeYarmond Edison, who coined the name Bon Iver from a deliberate misspelling of the French "bon hiver", meaning "good winter". It was recorded almost entirely in the wood cabin of Vernon's father, up in a remote corner of Northeast Wisconsin during the winter of 2006-2007. Vernon travelled up there by himself, equipped only with "a couple of microphones, a baritone guitar, a horn, a reverb pedal", as the press-release reads, and not so much the intention of making an album as simply working through the emotional fall out from the recent break-up of his band. He nevertheless found himself in the throes of 12-hour long recording sessions, out of which was born an album of 9 tracks and almost perfect beauty. This was initially released by Vernon himself on only 500 vinyl copies, but was picked up by Jagjaguar and 4AD in response to the well-deserved acclaim it swiftly began to accumulate.
For Emma...'s uniqueness, which even Vernon says he cannot accept full-credit for, must be attributed to the circumstances in which it was born. More than anything, it manages to capture an exquisite sense of space, in which not a single chord, harmony or lyric seems out of place. It is hard to believe that the album's incredibly lush production was achieved with such minimal equipment (the story goes that Vernon had to exchange a haunch of the deer he had hunted to live on when his guitar needed to be repaired...) yet the sounds created in the recording are certainly evocative of its environment, from the icy metallic ring of the guitars to the eerie and somewhat lupine quality of Vernon's endlessly layered falsetto. Crucially, however, this is not an album about the landscape, the wilderness or 'the great outdoors', but an album about all the tedious demons and personal anxieties that, far from being left behind, have a habit of becoming overwhelmingly amplified when you go somewhere to give yourself time and space.
Unsurprisingly -given that it was produced as an act of personal catharsis rather than for a general audience- on first listening, the songs may seem a little indulgently opaque; melodies break through sound-scapes at random intervals, the tracks seem to bleed into one another and the lyrics fade in and out of obscurity. After repeated listens however, it becomes clear that this is not the effect of wilful introspection but the painstaking distillation of different sounds and ideas, over which a runs a discreet but distinct trickle of narrative. The opener, 'Flumes', is all fresh wounds, its searingly
painful melody sliced through with the wiry sustain of a single guitar string as the words "only love is all maroon, gluey feathers on a flume" perform a kind of lyrical bloodletting. By the fourth track, 'The Wolves (Act I and II)', a sense of stillness and perspective has begun to form, as Vernon stoically advises us: "Harness your blame, harness your blame / and walk through". This process is then sealed by the final words of the last track, 'Re: Stacks', by which we are reminded "this is not the sound of a new man or crispy realization / it's the sound of the unlocking and the lifting away".
Fans of the album may not help but feel a little sad that something that was initially so personal and precious will now be shunted along the publicity line and wheeled round the gig circuit. "Solace my game", declares Vernon however. Thus, having packaged himself up and acquired a backing band, he takes his healing-show on the road, to distribute amongst the masses his pain and his absolution in equal parts.
Your Feedback
Login to post your comment