Best album of 2008 by a country mileFor Emma just creeps up on you and invades your existence but in the most wondrous way. Had an awful long drive home one evening in the pitch darkness and listened to it properly. It's like having your best in friend in the car with you. When it finished I just put it back on again. Very wintry, isolated, atmospheric and lovely. Creature Fear and Lump Sum are brilliant. Lets not mess about all the songs are superb. And then of course there is "Re. Stacks" - the song of the year. Quite where Justin Vernon goes next I don't know but I do care a lot.
If you get itI feel this is one of them albums which people may not get, or just not give enough time too. Im glad that i gave this album time , i have listened to it more than any other from start to finish. Every song has its beauty but for me the crescendo towards the end of "The Wolves (act 1 and 2) is one of the most emotional peices of music i have heard. To put it simply , just buy it.
Masterpiece.
In a similar vein to Damien Rice's magnificent album O, For Emma, Forever Ago is currently spending its gestation time simmering below the radar of popular consciousness before it surely soars into the affections of many. Like Damien Rice before him, Justin Vernon (who goes by the more commonly known alias Bon Iver) has created a record of such delicate beauty that you are left amazed by how it could leave you drained and affected by so many tangible, powerful emotions.
Although many reading this will already be aware of the context of this record and how it was made, it is integral to the listening experience and so worth mentioning again - although in truth, the music and melodies alone will be enough for some (perhaps more so given the lyrics are slightly hard to distinguish without the booklet). Following the break-up of his band, Vernon 'hibernated' and ensconced himself in a cabin in the Wisconsin wilderness. His self-imposed isolation surfaced feelings of loss, guilt and longing carried over the years. With no real intention of recording, the three month exile ended up being musically inspiring and led to the recording of nine polished tracks - though polished doesn't seem like the correct word.
The record's raw, organic constitution is thanks largely to the fact that Vernon was unprepared to record and used only basic equipment he had with him at the time. Each track offers little more than acoustic guitars, occasional electric guitar licks and an inventive use of vocal layering and haunting vocal reverb effects.
The album opens strongly with Flume and you are immediately aware that you are experiencing something of particular note. Instantly, the album's striking sense of poignancy seems to flood out of Vernon's falsettos and harmonies. The song's passing lyric "Sky is womb / And she's the moon" leaves you wondering long into the next track. Like nearly all of Vernon's poetry, the subject is always kept at arms length, each song's meaning is left twisted and hidden from view, reflective of Vernon's lonely, tortured circumstance.
Lump Sum picks up the pace with its 4/4 intro - its seductive chorus having you mimic the "Or so the story goes" lyric before you realise. Picking up tiny lyric segments and being attached to them is a real feature of the album - again largely due to its fairly low fidelity recording. Skinny Love is reminiscent of Lennon circa Dear Prudence as Vernon's anguish bears itself in a series of searing exclamations: "Who will love you? / Who will fight? / Who will fall far behind?"
With its own sense of momentum each track seems to provide the perfect platform for the next. The rousing finale of The Wolves (Act I and II) and its repetition "What might have been lost / What might have been lost / What might have been lost" vignettes Blindsided's palpable sense of heartbreak and longing, beautifully.
Although this album challenges more than it resolves, there are moments of hope and love. For Emma, perhaps the album's only song to be composed in a major key, describes a playful dispute between lovers and is a relieving tonic to the album's sometimes claustrophobic sense of solitude. It ends with the well-timed: "With all your lies / You're still very loveable." The song's stirring use of brass instruments acts like a soothing embrace after some of the album's darker moments.
The album's farewell is another mesmeric highlight. It's simple verse and chorus cycle could happily turn over another ten times, weaving and meandering before the stacked staccato delivery of the song's chorus leave indelible impressions on even the most thick-skinned listener.
Like many of the classic albums, albums that seem to pass through decades while hardly ageing, it is as if every moment Â- from the nagging, buzzing guitar string heard during Flume to the appearance of a vocoder during The Wolves (Act I and II) - no matter how incongruous it may seem becomes ultimately fundamental to the album's success.
For Emma, Forever Ago is the product of a time spent alone, a period of immense self-realisation, introspection and reflection. Justin Vernon's catharsis has benefited everyone. Among its cold chill are moments of genuine beauty and the message that we are all capable of confronting our fears and loss. This is the first musical masterpiece of the new century.
Layered, brooding, lyrical - a subtley wonderful debutA quick and coarse appraisal of Bon Iver's sound would describe him as an upliftingly melancholic, lower-fi version of Ray LaMontagne with a guitar sound akin to busked early Joni Mitchell and Nick Drake and a vocal similarity to Elliott Smith. A hint of The Beatles in acoustic mode peeps out sometimes along with the odd arresting, soaring moment reminiscent of Anthony and the Johnsons.
None of that takes account of the uniqueness of his poetical, sparse, dense lyrics and layered, building, brooding tunes - all of which become warmer and wrap more suppley round the soul with repeat listening.
In time, this album should be recognised as one of the finest acoustic albums ever made, up there with Nick Drake's Five Leaves Left, Lambchop's Nixon or Joni Mitchell's Blue. Indeed, Lambchop's leader Kurt Wagner, upon hearing Bon Iver at the 2008 End of the Road festival declared him a major talent. He's right.
PleasantIf you like Sufjan Stevens, Beirut or Bright Eyes, you'll like this. It's very nice, mellow and easy to listen to (if a bit 'samey'), but at the end of it you may well be longing for something a bit more LOUD AND SHOUTY to wake you up.
Hide Reviews
Searching... Please Wait 
Shopping Blog
DVDs
Music
Books
Games
Mall
