bon iver - for emma, forever ago

(Note: I already wrote about this album, but this is an entirely different piece, and I think it's a lot better than what I wrote a few years ago. Well worth a read.)

Fall is in full force once again and that chilly Maryland air is starting to work its way back onto campus, which can only mean one thing: Time to break out the cold weather music.

And cold weather music doesn't get any better than Bon Iver.

For Emma, Forever Ago was literally recorded in a Wisconsin cabin in the dead of winter, and every note and breath on this album places you right there in his makeshift studio, the resonating guitar sounds and layered vocals seemingly cold to the touch. It’s a beautifully depressing album tailored perfectly to those gloomy, ethereal nights where autumn is just beginning to seep into winter.

As the title would hint, this isn't exactly a happy listen. Justin Vernon, who did all the recording singlehandedly, purposefully secluded himself to confront his various personal demons, and it more than shows. Ostensibly, this is a break-up album directed at this Emma person and the intense heartache she caused him, yet it’s the farthest thing imaginable from your traditional angsty acoustic tearjerker.

More than anything I've ever listened to in my life, For Emma puts you directly into a mindset, eschewing tangible lyrics in favor of otherworldly vocals that transform Vernon’s fractured words into haunting truths that shake you at your very core. You don’t know who Emma is, you don’t know if she even exists, but you feel her presence as if she’s standing right beside you.

This is music that sticks with you. “Skinny Love,” “Flume,” re: Stacks”—these are songs that you never forget once you hear them for the first time. You may not know the words, but you know the melodies like you wrote them yourself, and you know exactly what they’re trying to tell you every time you hear them.

It probably sounds like I’m going completely off the deep end with these descriptions, but if anything I’m under-selling this album.

My relationship with this For Emma, Forever Ago goes deeper than my relationships with most people, as weird as that is to say. Every song on the album instantly takes me to a different place in time whenever I hear it.

When the bass drum kicks in on “Lump Sum,” I’m sitting in my apartment in K Towers watching the blizzard to end all blizzards pile up snow outside my window, my dim Wal-Mart lamp lighting up each flake as it hits the glass.

Every time I hear the chorus of “Skinny Love,” I’m walking past Public Safety in the rain, hood pulled tightly over my head, thinking about an Emma of my own.

“The Wolves (Acts I and III)” sends me to the backseat of a friend’s car in West Virginia, my tired voice singing along just soft enough that nobody hears me as I look out at the highway flying by.

I’ll put this album on countless times in the coming months, each listen a little different, each song piling up more and more memories every time. And hope I you do too.

- 10/31/2010