for emma, forever ago

Bon Iver transformed illness, heartbreak, and depression into transcendence with the acoustic allure of this devastatingly disarming document.  The dissolution of his band  DeYarmond Edison and the end of a relationship combined with a liver infection left Justin Vernon emotionally and physically exhausted.  He retired to his father's remote cabin in Medford, Wisconsin and spent several months there recuperating and recording tracks that would form the backbone of 'For Emma, Forever Ago'.  

Vernon recalls:   "I was in North Carolina and I was working in a kitchen. It really truly did suck the soul out of me. I was angry. I was a grill person and it angered me. Every moment I was in there I felt I was defacing my destiny or something. Like I was disrupting the time-space continuum by being in that kitchen because I was so out of place. I wasn't doing anything with my hands that I wanted to be doing. I would have anxiety so bad about it. I started out 40 hours a week there and I dwindled down to eight by the end of the year. I was just living off eight hours a week and then I got really sick. I think I contracted my disease...It was pneumonia and mono and then I had this liver infection as a part of the mono. I don't know where else I would've got it except from there, washing dishes. I remember quitting: I was just like, "I'm going to be in bed for three months, I can't come into work." And they were like, 'alright', and I never went back. That's the last time I ever really had a job ... I drove home 18 hours from North Carolina, and I sat on my parents' couch, and nobody was there. I felt really claustrophobic. I knew just because I left a place I knew I didn't want to be, I wasn't heading toward a place that meant something to me, or was going to be good for me. I felt really super-empty, and was like, 'I don't know if I can be here. For the first time in my life, I don't have a real musical identity, and I'm really worried about that. Maybe I need to take some time and do nothing.' I had some music that I started to think about in the back of my brain, but at that point, I was still sort of depressed. It wasn't that I was sad; I was indifferent. It felt really odd to feel that indifferent and lost and unsure. I basically left that afternoon. I went straight up north to my dad's cabin because I needed to be alone. I needed silence. It was a necessity more than a conscious decision...I don't think I really had any clue what was going on while I was there. I was just there. There would be days when I would work on music that sounded really happy. Or I'd be really happy to be working on it. I think you can be jazzed about working on a really sad song if you're into it. But when I left the cabin, I don't think I felt renewed or 'done' or anything. I still felt sick, my liver still hurt. I was going back to North Carolina sooner than I thought, to work with The Rosebuds. It took me months and months to realize what I had accomplished up there musically, personally, all that...The enigma of everything, I'm beside it. Yeah, I went up to the cabin in the woods and I made a record. It's sort of odd to look back and see it as magical, because it felt like a lonely few months at the cabin, where I plugged in the laptop and fucked around."

'For Emma, Forever Ago' features Justin Vernon on vocals, guitar, and engineering; with tracks added later including Christy Smith on drums and vocals; John Dehaven on trumpet; and Randy Pingrey on trombone.  Vernon released the album on his own in July of 2007 and Bon Iver was courted by several record companies before deciding to go with the independent Jagjaguwar label.  'For Emma, Forever Ago' charted at ninety-five in the Netherlands, sixty-four on the US Billboard 200, forty-two in the UK, twenty in Belgium, sixteen in Ireland, four on the US Top Independent Albums chart, and number one on the US Top Heatseekers chart.  The album was featured prominently on critical lists of the best recordings of not only 2008, but also the decade.  




http://boniver.org/






"Skinny Love"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRWbdZltELg

'For Emma, Forever Ago'
full album:

00:00 Flume 

03:39 Lump Sum 

07:00 Skinny Love 

10:59 The Wolves (Act I And II) 

16:21 Blindsided 

21:50 Creature Fear 

24:56 Team 

26:53 For Emma 

30:34 re: Stacks