Bon Iver 'For Emma Forever ago' album

In early 2008 Jagjaguwar will properly release the debut full-length "For Emma, Forever Ago" that has been making major waves in critics circles based on the strength of an early artist-pressed advance cd and a couple awe-inspiring sets at CMJ a few weeks back. The New York Times called it "irresistible" and Pitchfork stamped its early review of the album with a Recommended tag. For those of you hiding away in a cabin of your own, it's time that you hear the story, and more importantly, the music.

Bon Iver (pronounced: bohn eevair; French for "good winter" and spelled wrong on purpose) is a greeting, a celebration and a sentiment. It is a new statement of an artist moving on and establishing the groundwork for a lasting career. For Emma, Forever Ago is the debut of this lineage of songs. As a whole, the record is entirely cohesive throughout and remains centered around a particular aesthetic, prompted by the time and place for which it was recorded. Justin Vernon, the primary force behind Bon Iver, seems to have tested his boundaries to the maximum, and in doing so has managed to break free from any pre-cursing or finished forms.

It wasn't planned. The goal was to hibernate. Vernon moved to a remote cabin in the woods of Northwestern Wisconsin at the onset of winter. He lived there alone for three months, filling his days with wood splitting and other chores around the land. This solitary time slowly began feeding a bold, uninhibited new musical focus. The days slowly evolved into nights filled with twelve-hour recording blocks, breaking only for trips on the tractor into the pines to saw and haul firewood, or for frozen sunrises high up a deer stand. All of his personal trouble, lack of perspective, heartache, longing, love, loss and guilt that had been stock piled over the course of the past six years, was suddenly purged into the form of song.

press quotes
10/10: "I cannot sing enough praise for this beautiful slew of songs. The rumination of mumbled lyrics and ghostly experimental lulls ebb and flow on like a beautiful ocean tide." - Forest Gospel (10.18.07)

"irresistible" - New York Times (10.18.07)

"Vernon recorded the elegiac album, which revolves around a long-lost relationship, in a cabin. This tends to be music-journo shorthand for authenticity, but it's not necessary here. That For Emma, Forever Ago is a product of authentic personal inspiration is manifest in its sudden stylistic left-turn and its gorgeous, haunting songs..." - Independent Weekly (9.12.07)

"The album is a ruminative collection of songs full of natural imagery and acoustic strums -- the sound of a man left alone with his memories and a guitar... Rarely does folk -- indie or otherwise -- give so much over to ambience..." -- RECOMMENDED (10.04.07) - Pitchfork

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Bon Iver - For Emma Forever ago