"Imagine yourself in an old cottage, in the middle of the winter, surrounded by snow and trees with only instruments and old recording equipment as your company. Now you’re in the same environment as Justin Vernon, aka Bon Iver, was when he recorded his great album for Emma, forever ago.
He ran away to his father’s old cottage in the deep woods of Wisconsin, where he isolated himself from the world for three months. He needed to recover from his heartache after breaking up with his former long time girlfriend and the band he was a member of at that time. The idea was not to record music, no, it was a time for calmness and clearing out all the emotions and eruptions. Eventually, he began writing and recording a CD that would later be named For Emma, Forever Ago. The album is a summary of six years of his personal trouble, lack of perspective, heartache, longing, love and loss.
For Emma, forever Ago, is his first solo album and it gave Justin a place in the music industry, with it’s soft guitars, beautiful vocals and honest lyric.
Justin Vernon’s band name comes from the French “bon hiver”, which means “good winter”. It is spelled hiver, but he decided to spell it Iver, since hiver reminded him too much of his decease at that time, mononucleosis.
The album he released himself, until he signed a contract with the music label Jagjaguwar. The album gives the listeners shivers as a cold winter day does, but in a good way. You can feel his pain in the songs. It may not be the brightest CD you can find, and maybe that’s not the purpose, since it was recorded in the cruellest season of the year.

I’ve chosen to play his song Blood Bank today, since I like it very much. It’s calming and his voice is soothing. One day I got so irritated for not finding any good acoustic songs on spotify, and I told my cousin about it. She gave me her playlist with a lot of acoustic artists and songs, and among them I found Bon Iver’s song Blood Bank.
Music lyrics can sometimes not make any sense at all, but you still love the song. Like this one, he sings about how he met a girl at a blood bank and how they sit in a car while the girl is eating a candy bar. Then all of a sudden the snow starts to fall and they start to kiss, as a moon wants to crescent. I don’t understand what he wants us listeners to feel when he sings that, but in a way this song has made it to my personal favourite list of songs.

Bon Iver is 28 years old and currently lives in his home town Eau Claire, in Wisconsin. The kind of music that he and his band makes is indie rock. Indie rock is an alternative rock, not as loud and rough as hard rock. In indie rock it’s more guitars and kind of more soothing music. I think that indie rock is easier for people to like than hard rock.
Indie rock bands like to be independent and rather to put themselves on the market to try to sell the music, they sign contracts with smaller music labels to market themselves. They like to keep control over how the music is produced and so on, they want the music to spread from mouth to ear rather than expensive marketing.

Thanks for listening to me, and the song and I hope you enjoyed it!"

Skrivet av Sofia Bjärnek.



Mina personliga favoriter utav Bon Ivers få utgivna låtar:
Bon Iver – re:stacks
Bon Iver – Flume
Bon Iver – Skinny Love
Bon Iver – Blood Bank
Bon Iver & St. Vincent – Rosyln - Soundtrack Album Version