The Revolution Of Quiet

Doreen Barber on Bon Iver's For Emma, Forever Ago

This Revolution of Quiet, championed by the folksy likes of Iron & Wine and José González among many other, has another guitar-accompanied addition to its genre of indie folk, lo-fi, freak folk. Bon Iver's For Emma, Forever Ago was released in stores on February 19th, during my "good winter," or "bon hiver," which is nothing like the ice-filled lakes and dead grass pictured in the CD booklet. Despite my geographical shortcomings in the form of 80-degree weather, Bon Iver's album settled well with me.

It's a lonesome sound, this album recorded in a cabin among the woods of Wisconsin, alone with the brooding thoughts that come to mind when you're the only one breathing. The opening track, Flume, starts with a strummed guitar and Justin Vernon's soft voice in echoed falsetto: "I am my mother's only one/it's enough," a line that sets the mood for the sort of solitude For Emma, Forever Ago occupies, one more self-aware than self-pitying.

Vernon, who is the lone man behind Bon Iver, has created such a seamless album, I find it hard to pick a favourite, although I'm partial to the third track, Skinny Love, as it was the song which led me to him. NPR had featured it as a Song of the Day at the end of January, and its sparse guitar and rich emotion struck me as the Most Magnificent Thing. It's both restrained and powerful, calming with a growl, with lines like:

I told you to be patient
I told you to be fine
I told you to be balanced
I told you to be kind
now all your love is wasted?
then who the hell was I?

It's so brilliant, it makes the heart want to burst amid its mix of raw beauty and unabashed pain. The rest of the album follows a similar mood, although the songs are distinguishable enough, employing harmonies and hauntings of Vernon's voice, soft drumming and the pluck and twang of guitars to create distinct sounds for each song without jarring the listener away from the textured soundscape of For Emma, Forever Ago.

Only nine tracks long, the richness of each audio offering is more than enough to satiate anyone looking for a moment of pause. As winter begins to give way to spring, the beauty of a stark, but hardly barren, album will stay with us throughout 2008 as we find solace within its amazing layers of loneliness, longing, regret and soft hope, as the album ends with re: Stacks's final declaration: "your love will be/safe with me."

© 2008 Doreen Barber

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