Bon Iver got to do what a man’s got to do
Words Ann Lee
Retiring to a log cabin in the middle of the woods of Wisconsin for months on end with no one to keep you company besides a shotgun and a few bits of musical equipment seems like a recipe ripe for a zombie horror-fest. Thankfully, for Justin Vernon there were no freaky hillbilly locals after his blood and instead, left in perfect isolation, he created For Emma, Forever Ago.
Most people would have gone crazy with boredom, so just why did Justin feel the need to lock himself away from the distractions of the modern world? “I went because I had the opportunity,” he explains. “It sounded like something I always wanted to do. I’d also reached a bunch of different crossroads in my life. It may sound corny, but I was just trying to escape myself. I really needed to locate where I was mentally.”
Created as sub-zero temperatures approached, For Emma, Forever Ago is very much a winter album, full of fragile vocals and hushed melodies that nudge you into a warm and comforting cocoon. And, as you’d expect, the production is as sparse as the landscape that surrounded Justin. Christ, he even christened himself ‘Bon Iver’ for the album, dropping the ‘h’ from bon hiver, meaning ‘good winter’ in French.
“It was lonely sometimes, but I knew I didn’t want to be anywhere else,” he continues. “It was a bittersweet experience, but it was fine because I knew I had to be there for a period of time. I think when people have that peace and that ability to speak with themselves free of outside voices, chatter and phones, then you can approach yourself without distraction and it helps your mind.”
Justin’s heartfelt musical love letter was a way for him to reason with the emotional fallout of a broken relationship. “She’s a person that was always in my thoughts,” he says of his ex-girlfriend, who’s not called Emma. “Whether she knew it or not, her memory took many years to get over. It never got better and finally I just had to say, ‘Enough is enough.’ No one will completely understand a lot of things I had to say in that record. It’s a story, not just about a person, but about what someone can do to the people around them.”
Whoever she is, this is one dedication she’s unlikely to forget.
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