Your Love Will Be Safe With Me (Bon Iver, Revisited)
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Artist:
The other night something unexpected happened while I was exhaustingly hauling my body up the stairs to my apartment door. As always, I had my iPod in, and was listening to God-knows-what. The point is, as I was approaching the stairs, I heard the church choir torrent from the beginning of Bon Iver's "Lump Sum" flood through the crack beneath the door to pierce through the noise in my earphones. I pressed pause and opened the door. There was my friend (who has recently been struck by a dash of 'hopeless romance') lying on the couch with a rum and coke, eyes-closed, taking in every twist and turn of Bon Iver's well-documented and praised album, For Emma, Forever Ago.
This friend of mine immediately jumped up and began excitedly espousing the reasons for his having listened to the album for seven or eight straight hours. As he spoke, I began to think that he was honing in on one of the most crucial and appealing aspects of the album. That is to say, he identified the reason why this album has been so widely identified with.
His eyes dashed behind his glasses as he spun the wheel of his iPod.
"Man...These songs make me want to experience the kind of love that can make someone feel that kind of pain. The kind of love where, when it's over, you can't help but create something this good," he said with a contemplative excitement.
He really made me think about it, and as I said, I think he's onto something. From start to finish, Bon Iver's music has such a deep-reaching effect, and I think that this is the reflection of his stature as an artist, rather than simply as a great musician.
Art is the output one's imagination and perception takes in life and the world around them and filters it through their creative capacities. Vernon's music does just this. Through it's surges of intensity, tender emotiveness, and trickling ice-water vocals, it presents love, longing, and loss in all its awe-inspiring power. It sparks the nether-regions of the listener's heart, and brings out all the brushed away memories of the peaks, plateaus, and pits of old romances. For Emma, Forever Ago is a beautiful encapsulation of love's power to build and destroy, to mend and to cripple. My good friend hit the nail on the head. He felt the beauty of Vernon's art right in the same place in his chest where Vernon felt the pangs that spawned the music.
PS: One of the bands in which Vernon has worked has just released a new album. Check it out. They're called Volcano Choir (review to imminently follow).
The Wolves (Act I and II) - Bon Iver
Blood Bank - Bon Iver
re: Stacks - Bon Iver
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