Bon Iver For Emma, Forever Ago by: Steve Scully Tue:01-Apr-08 Label: Jagjaguwar Year: 2008 WB rating 83 out of 100

Is there a more beautiful muse than sheer misery? Justin Vernon (aka Bon Iver) gives voice to the one of the art world’s greatest paradoxical relationships: often in the deepest pits of sorrow and despair an artist produces the most poignant works of their career.

In the four months he spent in the wilderness – in between chopping wood and lonely, freezing nights – Vernon wrote and recorded For Emma, Forever Ago, a record full to the brim with magnificent introspection. This brand of quiet acoustic folk has been given a new life in recent times (you can thank the likes of Jose Gonzalez for this renaissance). But where Gonzalez brings a little bit of quirk (via some well-chosen covers) to the table, Vernon’s style is one more in the morbid mindset: there’s no gimmick here, just plain, unadulterated heart and soul. It’s a wonderful thing to hear. For comparison’s sake, think Elliot Smith’s From a Basement on the Hill and you might get some idea of the feel of this record.

Not to get bogged down in the lovely back-story and ‘feel’ of Vernon’s opus, the substance on offer is something quite special. There’s not much of a shift from the paradigm that comes in the form of opening track ‘Flume’. The layered vocals, the lightly-strummed acoustic… it’s pretty much the equation for the whole album. Vernon’s vulnerable falsetto, the stand-out of the vocal registers in the multi-layered concoction, is what lends this song its most attractive element: the fragility and honesty behind it that transcends the purposeful dodginess of the recording. The many vocals are all out of time with each other (however miniscule the discrepancy), and the voice sounds strained, but it’s a hypnotic little trip.

The falsetto is again at its most effective in ‘Skinny Love’, especially by contrast as Vernon drops down to his emotive chest voice in the chorus and the hook, a simple repetition: “my/my/my/my/my/my/my/my.” Again the harmonies are inexact, but perfectly so. The practical, tangible inconsistencies on the record and in the recording itself are matched by Vernon’s pained ramblings: “Now I’m breaking at the britches/ And at the end of all your lines/ Who will love you?/ Who will fight?/ Who will fall far behind.”

There is little that can be said about For Emma, Forever Ago that doesn’t resonate with unworthiness. “Some day my pain/ Someday my pain/ Will mark you,” Vernon sings on ‘Wolves (Act I and II)’. Spend some time alone with this record and you will be marked; spend some time alone with this album, and you will fall in love with the sameness of it all. Barely moving out of a slow dawdle, Justin Vernon grabs you by the arm and holds you back with him. You feel every inch of his pain, every inch of his desperate loneliness, and experience fully his cold isolation.

Those in charge of the music industry at the moment have seen it fit to shove dance-rock down our throats whichever way we turn. Luckily, some are happy still to cater to the shoegazers, the introspective and introverted. If you’re looking for fist-pumping sing-alongs, there’s another Bon out there for you. But if a cathartic and touching listening experience is what you desire most, then look no further than Bon Iver.