Bon Iver

For Emma, Forever Ago

For Emma, though only nine tracks long, is as beautiful, bleak and intimate as anything 2008 is likely to throw up.

It operates so securely and intensely in its own world – a world of snow and silence and long-percolated memories – that to listen sometimes seem like an intrusive act.

The album evocatively conjures the loneliness of a long northern winter, placing Vernon's lovely songs in a distant, blurred vacuum of physical and emotional isolation.

Although comprising only nine songs spread over less than forty minutes, For Emma, Forever Ago is one of the most captivating collections these ears have heard for some time. 

These songs are raw, bold and slightly uncomfortable, but at the same time authentic and therefore extremely special, like the offspring of creativity and isolation at their most fruitful.

Vernon gives a soulful performance full of intuitive swells and fades, his phrasing and pronunciation making his voice as much a purely sonic instrument as his guitar.

The strength is in Vernon’s ability to make a quiet, lonely album that is not boring. Nor is it easily placed into any one genre, unless it’s music recorded in rural Wisconsin cabins.

Though the songs are generally the same – minimalist guitar, a lot of vocals, almost no percussion – it’s the brilliant verse hooks of Flame or the vocal-busting choruses of Skinny Love that make this record.

It revels in its sparseness, layering Vernon's high vocals and gentle guitar lines over and over like soft webs of regret.

This is a recording as pure as the drifting snow which bedded its creator in, and a tender testament to a lonely soul crying into the darkness.

With bolder steps, Bon Iver could become a voice for our generation worth getting excited over. For Emma already is.

It’s timeless, anachronistic music that could have been around for centuries, just waiting to be discovered in the Wisconsin snow. Finally thawed out and brought to life, you’ll wonder how you ever got by without it.