![]() It has an even barer production than “For Emma, Forever Ago,” creating a more spare atmosphere that gives the listener space to think and feel. ![]() There’s one album, though, that executes this balance of loneliness and peace even better. “It’s the sound of the unlocking and the lift away.” “This is not the sound of a new man or crispy realization,” he sings. In the track “Re: Stacks,” the aching lonesomeness of earlier songs is abandoned in favor of complex but comforting construction. You might expect it to come off as a cold echo, but it provides company, texture, and warmth.īy the end of the album, solitude becomes peace. It’s not that suffering is justified by the art that comes from it but that the music brings out textured feelings that help to process it.Īlthough the album was made in isolation, Vernon layers his voice so richly that the vocal track is a thick woven blanket, such as the opening harmonies of “The Wolves (Act I and II).” Even on tracks that would normally feature just a single melody track, like “Blindsided,” he multitracks multiple vocal layers, resulting in doubled and tripled falsetto voices. Still, myths have explaining power, which is what’s important: the album tells us that we want our loneliness to mean something.Īt the end of the song “The Wolves (Act I and II),” Vernon repeats the phrase, “someday my pain,” yearning for a purpose for his isolation. The escape to nature didn’t really exist. Vernon had some buddies over to record the horns on “For Emma,” and his dad’s hunting cabin had a TV. However, the problem with mythology is that it’s not true. ![]() In the album’s best-known song, the yearning “Skinny Love,” he sings, “My my my, staring at the sink of blood and crushed veneer.” On the opener “Flume,” the chorus goes, “Only love is all maroon / Gluey feathers on a flume / Sky is womb and she’s the moon.” The words are ethereal but fleshy, evoking the feeling of watching the viscera of nature right outside your cabin window. The lyrics are bizarre, filled with patchwork imagery of beauty and violence. It’s an album that perfectly captures a specific place and time its whole emotional tone is explained by that lonely winter in the woods. When you listen to the tracks, though, you understand why people tell the story. It gets repetitive and vaguely mythological: cultural narratives of the castaway, the hermit philosopher and the return to nature all collide into one perfect indie folk legend. With the materials he had on hand - a guitar, an old Macintosh computer, and a four-track recorder - he made an album titled ” For Emma, Forever Ago,” under the name Bon Iver.Īll contemporary reviews of the album start with that story. After weeks of drinking beer and chopping wood, he started to write music. So he drove through the night to his father’s hunting cabin, both “to take some time and do nothing” and process the painful failures of his life. Justin Vernon, a flannel-clad 25-year-old from Wisconsin, had his heart broken at the same time he contracted a string of diseases that left him bedridden for months. It’s a story that launched one of the biggest indie acts of the 21st century. This week, he covers two albums shaped by loneliness : Bon Iver’s “For Emma, Forever Ago” and Adrianne Lenker’s “songs.” you did it more than justice.In “Music that Makes You Feel,” columnist Sam Waddoups ’23 recommends albums that take the listener through a specific emotional journey. This has been one of my fave bon iver tracks 4 a looong time. ![]() I always come back to this ! <333 Comment by Sembari Ubersick #thissongissick □□□ Comment by Astral If I could only listen to one song for the rest of my life, this would be it Comment by Joshua Benjamin Why do i never get tired of this song its been so many years now but shit Comment by Bryan Trabing promise you won't regret it!! I do not have a ton of money, This is all I got =) Comment by KAALI PLEASE PUT THIS ON SPOTIFY Comment by Emma kellyĪnyone mind checking out my music? A minute would mean the world to me :D I make and do EVERYTHING myself! I'm 15 you will be very surprised, it takes so much hard work and its hard to get noticed even if it is good quality. I felt that such an open-ended song deserved another version, so here it is, a little gutsier." I love the tranquility of the original version, but the way it comes out whenever I try to sing it is always kind of bold and raw. This song is one of my favourites to play late at night on the deck or at a campfire. It's such a beautiful song that it almost transcends meaning it is open to interpretation, but arguably better without it as just a wash of vowels and consonants. "A friend and I once chatted about this song and it made realize how vague and cryptic the lyrics are at face value, while somehow being resonant and evocative at some deeper level.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |