The vocal layering helps make the song seem really big, especially in the choruses. The guitar harmonics and that buzzing (sounds like string buzz to me) in the breakdown and the spaces between vocal lines start to hint at that weird otherworldlyness that Bon Iver is capable of. I think this song is a great introduction to the overall aesthetic of For Emma, with the acoustic strumming, falsetto, layered vocals and interesting ornamentation. We only met last year, and I never had the chance to tell her all this, but one day, I will. She assured me it was going to be very helpful.I listened and it was very much the same as you, I fell asleep listening to it all night long, everyday since that day.Ībout the girl (K), I've always had a crush on her, but since that day she became much more than that. I was having a rough time, going throught depression and so many anxiety, I tweeted about it and that's when a girl sent me a link talking about the album 'For Emma, forever ago', she said it was very calming for her, and also her favorite, if I liked I could listened to it. That's the defition of what I felt while listening it for the first time. To me all of those songs seemed caught up in love and love lost and it had such a mournful quality to it, but it seemed so sincere and authentic.' 'It was one of the first nights I fell asleep listening to music all night long, and I would wake up and hear various parts of those songs, and it was among the first times I realized music could incept a longing or a nostalgia for something you never really had or knew.
If it seems bizarre that I got from Flume to here then I apologize, but it seemed like the ideal song to launch into a little reverie that is probably wholly unintelligible to anyone else. And that one's relationship with the music that he has helped cultivate stands independent from who he is as a person, just like how my interpretations of the music are separate from everyone else's. Segueing, I personally try not to buy into the cult that seems to surround Justin Vernon sometimes, because I've realized it's important to recognize that he has managed to create a sort of place-name-concept (Bon Iver) that perhaps transcends the void between the incredibly intimate and the universal collective. I had always selfishly assumed Bon Iver would remain relatively obscure, because it didn't seem possible or fair that music so intimate to me could be so widely listened to. I was a freshman in college when I realized how popular Bon Iver had become. Her parents had a house on Lake Superior in northern Minnesota, and the ruggedness of the outdoors with all the rock and snow and white birch and frozen lake - seeing that for the first added another dimension to Vernon's music. It was something of a sad joke when I was talking to someone on the phone I loved very much (but realized too late) told me that she had a hard time listening to the new Bon Iver album because reminded her of me too much, despite the fact I had only ever listened to 10 Deathbreast with her when I last saw her when I visited Colorado in early September.Īlso as a final tangental anecdote to my overly sentimental ramble, when I was seeing a girl in college who lived in Minneapolis, visiting the Midwest put the music o Bon Iver in such context. Every lover I've had ends up conflating Bon Iver with me, even if they knew it before they met me. Regardless of where I am in my life, the music seems to readjust with me and make itself relavant and salient. Since then, Justin Vernon's music, particularly Bon Iver, has always been something that I feel close to.
To me all of those songs seemed caught up in love and love lost and it had such a mournful quality to it, but it seemed so sincere and authentic. It was one of the first nights I fell asleep listening to music all night long, and I would wake up and hear various parts of those songs, and it was among the first times I realized music could incept a longing or a nostalgia for something you never really had or knew. That night I downloaded Flume, Lump Sun, Blood Bank, Babys, and one more off For Emma that I can't recall.
But he seemed genuinely enthused that I liked the music he was playing. It means good winter." I was the sort of student who I think frustrated my teacher somewhat I wasn't good at math, and I could be a little disruptive. He said, "Bonnie Ver," I asked him to repeat himself, and he said, "It's French. I raised my hand and my teacher came over and I asked him who was playing. Anyway, the chorus of Flume came on and it had that quality that seems to reframe everything you're perceiving in a new light. My teacher always played music during tests, usually it was acoustic blues and what I had always assumed was called folk. I was sitting in high school geometry class one February in 2009, taking a test.