Bon Iver
Broken Man Makes Lovely
Jul 21, 2008
Words by Sean Moeller
Illustration by Johnnie Cluney
Sound engineering by Patrick Stolley
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Welcome to Daytrotter
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Flume
original version appears on For Emma, Forever Ago
For this take, Mike picked up a banjo and used his ebow in the verses, as he usually does live with the baritone guitar, and plucked some towards the end. Sean sat at the piano; he played simple lines during the verses and chords during the chorus. In the break of the song, when everything falls apart, he created this angular melody that went out of key for four or more measures and crept back in with all of our voices, that really made the song for us. I played bass drum and a 12-string guitar. The arrangement is the same as the album version. We played through and kept our first take. "Flume" served as the catalyst for all of the songs that came after it; It was written first out of all of the songs on For Emma, Forever Ago.
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Lump Sum
original version appears on For Emma, Forever Ago
As a band, this take was one of our favorite musical moments out of our entire winter and spring tours. We connected well and created something very beautiful in the new arrangement we mustered up for this song. Mike plugged in two vintage amplifiers and messed with their tones and volumes. The frequency hum of the amps happened to be in the key of the song. All of the noise you hear in the beginning and end of the song and through out the mid-section is just the amps feeding back and their volumes being turned up and down. Sean played piano; his chords soaked up most of the song's foundation making it so that really the only audible sound from the guitar you could make out (during most of the song) was the clanking of my hand that the strumming pattern caused. I played bass drum again and guitar. The bass drum pedal was broken during the first part of the song, so I didn't play it. Mid-way through I fixed it and brought it into the first chorus, which caused a well taken accident ó rounded out the song's foundation. I added a bunch of organ noise at the end to add to the noise of the amps.
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Re Stacks
original version appears on For Emma, Forever Ago
This song speaks for itself: it's me and a guitar. It tells a story ó goes back and forth between a former self and my present self. There's noting more to say. This was the only song on For, Emma… that didn't consist of an SM-57 as one of its main instruments. I borrowed microphones from a friend in my attempts to make the song sound a bit more rounded.
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Creature Fear
original version appears on For Emma, Forever Ago
We added color to the intro of this song. Sean played drums, as usual. Mike played baritone guitar, as usual. I sang and played guitar, as usual. And of course, as per standard, the three of us sang. I don't remember the name of the pedal I used on my guitar on this song, but it most definitely gave the performance a newer feel. Other than the change of guitar tone, we kept this arrangement in close proximity to the album version.
Enough has been made out of the cool side of the pillow. Enough with it. It's just an unused side, nothing more and nothing less. A pillow with potential. It's just lying there, naked by the headboard. Plenty has been made about the empty warmth of the bed too. The side of the bed, previously occupied, just recently deserted for a different bed. It's never meant a better bed, necessarily, just a different one, one with different sheets and blankets, different pillows for sure and without question, a different person to share it with. Plenty has been made out of how that warm, oblong shape of space that we can run our hands over and get burnt by the touch is like an obscenity to behold, to have to behold. There's no way around it. It's not the same as the warm spot that gets left in the mornings, when the alarm clocks beckon our better half away to an appointment or a job. This is the permanent kind of heat loss. It's there and then it's gone like a vapor, the scent of those limp, resting limbs and necks still reeks like betrayal and love, more love, no - more betrayal.
Justin Vernon, or the formerly wounded man behind the wooded Wisconsin band Bon Iver, is - right now - one of the foremost authorities on bleeding hearts and then finding a way of making them better. And while there is a lot of material about the cool side of the pillow and the warm, emptiness of the mattress, there's not as much material combining both the somberness of despair and the somberness of wanton hope. It's hope all the same and, in time, it can be something fulfilling again. It's almost a variation of standard depression and happy depression - where the shit luck things that happened (the beloved departing) will all get washed out of the picture eventually. If you hang a dirty, stinky shirt or pair of pants in a closet for long enough, they don't stink anymore.
It's the same principle - in a way - that's incorporated into the touching and heartrending work that Vernon wrote and recorded for For Emma, Forever Ago, a record that is as stunning in its natural grace and shape as any that's come into this world in the last five years, maybe longer. It's a work that can make you cry as it's taking your breath away. We're sitting there thinking about a broken man, a guy who's been completely splintered into fragments of himself. We can picture him inconsolable, crumbled into a tidy pile of destruction. We just keep the lens on him, with the lights surrounding him held back and low, barely touching him as if they too are afraid to put their hands on his shoulders and ask him if he's okay, does he need anything, can they do anything. They stand back, letting him breathe the blackness of mind and of spirit that sometimes is as morbidly comforting as a dark coffee when they mouth needs it. Suddenly, after weeks and months of no movement whatsoever, there's activity - slow and methodical - in the legs and arms, a wiping of the eyes, an embarrassed lifting of the eyes to see if anyone spotted the falling apart. If someone did, that happens, if no one did, it's okay.
The rebuilding begins surprisingly quickly and there's new strength that the broken man can call upon. Vernon had been teased by a blouse and felt the power drained from him by the memories of the eyes and the legs that are no longer his to call baby. They are no longer his to smile to and be lost in. It takes work to come to that conclusion and For Emma is the best that anyone's ever done that. He and his live band of Mike Noyce and Sean Carey perform a ritual every time they open their mouths, spilling out that winter that it took to endure this, reenacting the wood smoke that was likely pluming from the chimney stack of the cottage that Vernon holed up in, frosting up the winters that we were trying to look out of and forcing us to just be there, in that time, again, with him, as sad and lovely as it was back then. We come to believe that it was lovely. He makes us and we're damn thankful.
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