You know the feeling you have when it’s snowing out and you’ve just come in from the cold and changed out of your sopping wet pants and socks into warm fuzzy pajamas?  You’re sitting by your window and smoking a cigarette, or maybe drinking coffee/tea/hot chocolate/whatever it is you prefer, and all you hear is the sound of the snow falling.  No one is stupid enough to drive, and all of humanity seems to be bundled up the same way you are.  You know that feeling?  The warm, creeping feeling of utter solitude. Bon Iver’s For Emma, Forever Ago somehow manages to translate this emotion into a record spanning less than 40 minutes.

Bon Iver is Justin Vernon, who found himself retreating to some remote location after the break-up of his band and his relationship with his then girlfriend.  He swore up and down he would never make music again, and yet for some reason For Emma, Forever Ago came seeping out of his body in 2007.  It was released this year, after the indie label Jagjaguwar signed Bon Iver. It now sits humbly as one of the most well-received albums of the last twelve months.  Listening to it, this information should not come as a shock.

Vernon’s quiet vocals do less to drive a song than to complement it.  Over simple guitar chords, he sings of loss and love, and maybe something almost indiscernible, with always a tinge of loneliness.  Flume plunges us into dark, almost creepy waters before we’re placed gently into the weeping arms of Lump Sum.  Vernon sings quietly like it’s his job, and his words sound only like a lilting mumble without the accompaniment of lyrics as a guide.  After an introduction that almost sounds like a choir of celibate monks, a simple guitar progression moves us into something about selling whatever for something else.  At one point he says “Fit it all/Fit it in the doldrums/So the story goes.”  Knowing this much, we don’t need to know much else.  Vernon is as cryptic as he is emotive, leaving the listener with an unsettled feeling of reality.  “So the story goes.”  Really, how many of us have felt this way at one point or another?

Skinny Love is easier to understand, even upon the first cold listen.  Vernon spends the song imploring someone referred to as Skinny Love to do one thing or another, before almost angrily announcing “And I told you to be patient/And I told you to be fine/And I told you to be better/And I told you to be kind/And now all your love is wasted/Well then who the hell was I?”  Following this, ol’ Bon rips into a soulful verse before ending the song with a series of awooohooo’s.  It took him two songs to announce it, but his voice can do more than just emote.  It can go so far as to grab the crotch of your pants and pull downwards, nuts and all.

It’s not the purpose of this album to be powerful, so Vernon goes right back into his passive tone and remains there for the remaining six tracks, only peeking out of his protective shell a few more times.  Despite the ominously named Creature Fear, which could be the title of Slipknot’s next album, it’s a song that can literally lull you to sleep.  For Emma, one half of the album’s namesake, stands out as the only song with trumpets thrown in, but Vernon’s lyrics are the same, always teetering on the edge of something more before pulling back at the last second.  He sings quietly, “Go find another lover/to bring, to string along.”  Damn Emma, what did you do to this guy?  

Keeping with the theme of the album, Vernon finishes just as it seems he’s about to explode, and we are left with RE: Stacks as a closer.  Vernon’s voice is nearly heartbreaking on what is arguably the most gorgeous song of the entire piece o’ work.  He declares “Everything that happens from now on/This is pouring rain.”  It doesn’t exactly make sense, but when you throw words like that together in a jumbled soup of art, it always manages to pull on your heartstrings in some sort of primal manner.

For an album that has been so well-reviewed, For Emma, Forever Ago suffers the gift/curse that many albums of its caliber are presented with; not nearly enough people know about it.  It seems somehow to have slipped under the radar.  Music critic behemoth website Pitchfork doesn’t even have the album on its list of most-read reviews.  How is it that something this beautiful can go unnoticed by so many people?  Why haven’t more of my friends been touched by the beauty and near-silent grieving of Justin Vernon’s sometimes soulful but always sad voice?  While we can take solace in the fact that Bon Iver is gaining at least a little recognition among the sea of albums and artists being pushed by the corporate music industry, it feels almost like a crime that For Emma, Forever Ago is not more well-known.

But then, remember the feeling of watching the snow alone.  You know the feeling you get when someone barges in out of nowhere and interrupts you?  That feeling, that really awful feeling, would probably be the exact same feeling you’d get if you heard Skinny Love being played on mainstream radio.  So terrible, it should be outlawed.  For Emma, Forever Ago is like this beaten-to-death snow metaphor I keep bringing up; very precious, and very much something you can only appreciate on your own.

Release date: 24/03/08
Artist website: www.boniver.org
Label: 4AD / Jagjaguwar

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