Bon Iver - For Emma, Forever Ago [Review]
In 2006, Justin Vernon wanted to be alone. He and his girlfriend had broken up, his band was in tatters, and he was struck with mono. So while his bandmates settled in North Carolina under a new name, Vernon resigned alone to his father’s cabin, where he stayed for 3 months of the brutal Wisconsin winter. For Emma, Forever Ago was an unintentional biproduct of his snowy refuge. He initially used only what was available to him: his voice, when it recovered; a few guitars, drums his brother had dropped off for him, and obsolete recording equipment.
The product is a cohesive and surreally intimate folk album, with every instrument and vocal becoming a familiar fixture of the world Vernon creates. Emma peers into a lifetime of anguish and uncertainty that Vernon finally confronted in isolation. It should probably read like a narrative then, but somehow, lyrics often fill a more subliminal role. Vernon’s voice is simply overpowering. His chapped falsetto swells, lingers, and trembles to dust between strums, and it's sometimes superfluous to even know what he's saying. And that's not a shot at his lyrics, either. Amidst the soft croon and pluck that opens “Creature Fear”, Vernon suddenly storms through in falsetto and excites the spindly guitar to fever. He retreats, the branches slow, and snowflakes twist delicately between them again. His voice is the most emotive tool of Emma, and wedded to a guitar, it's innately reminiscent of winter. Vernon exercises a lower register as well, to great effect: in "Skinny Love" he looses a pained chorus that is almost uncomfortably raw.
Lyrically, however, Vernon is less straightforward. He begins with a powerful statement: "I am my mother's only one/It's enough". From there he drifts, as though his point has been made. Words like "maroon" and "rouge" offer abstract imagery, but that's about as literal as it gets. Here Vernon's increasingly dissociated lyrics function less to articulate an idea than to carve out a multifaceted tone. Ambient noise gives way to choir as “Lump Sum” drifts lazily into focus. Then, paired with a more urgent tempo, Vernon lends motive to his winter banishment through a series of gorgeous metaphors: “My mile could not/Pump the plumb/In my arbor till my ardor/Trumped every inner inertia”. Word choice is Vernon's greatest talent. He trades words like “heart” for “plumb”, “ring” for “cold knot”, “car” for “red horse”, and breathtakingly summates his tendency along a destructive path with “inertia”. This combination of dazzling succinctity and thought-provoking ambiguity are what makes Emma so unique on paper. Uptempo "Skinny Love" pursues close behind, pleading "Come on skinny love, just last the year". By the cathedral-esque echochamber of "The Wolves (Act I and II)", however, Vernon comes to greater terms and mourns "What might've been lost" in chilly autotune, sounding surprisingly at home in otherwise low-tech instrumentation.
Emma’s brief 37 minutes closes with the optimistic-sounding “Re: Stacks". True to form, Vernon provides jarringly innovative commentary on the burden he left in the snow. It’s a triumph, but not a storybook ending. “This is not the sound of a new man/Or a crispy realization” he assures, plucking with blue fingers; Vernon denies the fairy tale. Every weight he cast off his shoulders took a piece of him with it. There was no shining moment of revolution or clarity. No sunset, pretty girl, or fist pump. Justin Vernon would make a shitty movie. But as far as music goes, he’s very very good at that.
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