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9/06/2008

i do recommend



I'm waking up here with tea and Bon Iver. So yes, I did buy For Emma, Forever Ago which I must say was a wise choice. This CD is amazing ~ I very highly recommend it for your listening pleasure. It's full of the most beautiful layers and sounds, pretty incredible seeing as Justin Vernon recorded the album in his Dad's Wisconsin-hunting cabin:

"....He didn’t go there intending to write and record an album. He went there to take stock of his life, enjoy a bit of solitude, think, nap, chop firewood, play guitar, do nothing, do something, work in the barn, walk nearby trails—find his natural rhythm. After about a month of emotional decompression and therapeutic self-indulgence, music began gradually, insistently welling up.

'There wasn’t any distraction. There wasn’t anybody for me to run to and say, "Hey look what I’m doing!" As soon as you say something, as soon as you get excited about it and go tell someone, your ego is involved. Even the smallest fraction of that and you can kill some of the magic.'

His routine of writing and recording evolved into long days, occasionally 14-15 hours, spent working on songs and refining musical ideas. Listening to the resulting album,
For Emma, Forever Ago, you can feel the wintry solitude in the layering of Vernon’s singular falsetto, at times piling up into a lush choir—a sort of wolf-pack harmony serenading the wide-eyed Wisconsin moon."
[-from this Paste magazine article by Jason Killingsworth]

Here's to good music, a restful weekend, and autumn in the air. Yes, even in Houston.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

ahhhh, another cd I need to get. sounds lovely.am looking forward to hearing it. thanks for the review.

Robin said...

I've honestly been listening to that album almost non-stop for 6 weeks. It is my favorite for the rest of the year. Have you seen this Daytrotter Session about Bon Iver?
You can download live versions of 4 of the songs there, I love them.
I like this article too, about his lyrics.
I can't decide if my favorite song is Lump Sum or Re:Stacks...or maybe Blindsided. Well I love them all.

jenni said...

Thanks for the great links, Robin!