During a recent listen to a Jens Lekman song that I’d heard 15-plus times, I was hit with an epiphany, “Oh, Jens just said, ‘Your father is mailing me all the time/ Says he just wants to say “hi”/ I send him out of office auto replies.’” The line was so softhearted and acutely worded that I wondered how I could have been so seduced by his sound to let the lyrics slip by unnoticed.

After my folly, I was inspired to do more research on how I could listen to a song for the umpteenth time and still be deaf to its tone and intent. Upon researching, I came to a statistic in The New York Times from September 2003 that said more than 90-percent of our communication rests not on what we say, but how we say it. It’s a staggering statistic implying that our understanding comes from watching and listening to the tone and secondarily to what is actually being said. When put into the context of music sales it’s perhaps less remarkable considering the rise and fall of countless pop acts (remember Britney Spears?). However, it is something when applied to an act like Bon Iver (Justin Vernon’s moniker).

To judge Vernon’s recent album For Emma, Forever Ago on sound alone would lead one to believe it was a hopeful and periodically tender album, highlighted by the slate hues of the winter landscape in northwestern Wisconsin where the songs were recorded. Which is true, but the ten percent you’d miss by not listening to what’s being said would be your loss.

However, if you decide to be an active listener, attending equally to tone and lyrics, you’d realize that it’s a chronicle of the uncooperative collapse of a relationship and Vernon’s three-month retreat into isolation to write and cope.

The songs seem to act as a timeline tracing Vernon’s troubled relationship with Emma (the album’s namesake). Beginning with commitment, “Sold my red horse for a venture home”; followed by the initial struggles, “Come on skinny love just last the year/ Pour a little salt we were never here”; the grieving and bitterness that follow the breakup, “Go find another lover/ To bring a… to string along”; and finally ending with his acceptance of their inability to rectify, “This is not the sound of a new man or crispy realization/ It’s the sound of the unlocking and the lift away”.

The active listener plays the part of a consoling friend as Vernon describes her stringing him along, her lying, and her unwillingness to harness the blame, and as a friend we are venomous towards Emma. Then, Vernon describes his being spit out from her mouth, being blinded and blindsided, and not being a new man with any crispy realizations, and we are gushing for him.

Throughout Vernon’s tearing open his and Emma’s past, the melodies on For Emma, Forever Ago are acoustic guitar-heavy and nearly always unassumingly soothing. That is with the exception of the track “Team,” the climax of the album, and its only instrumental song, which is underlined by rising and falling whistling and guitar chords, coupled with a deep bass laid over top. Vernon’s deep falsetto is often reminiscent of Iron and Wine tracks, lulling the listener into believing he harbors no hostility over the affair (but we know better, don’t we active listeners?).

Frankly, Vernon’s confessional-of-an-album will be one of the best of the year for all the reasons listed above and all of the emotional responses that it elicits from its listeners. Though Vernon describes the relationship as, “Forever ago,” it is clear that she is still firmly present. And perhaps sadistically, I can only hope that Emma remains nearby so that I can add another album like For Emma, Forever Ago to my collection.

Bon Iver MySpace
Jagjaguwar Records