I know I’m a bit late to the game on this one, but I found it difficult to critique such an intimidatingly unique work. Just to recap for the two or three people who use the internet that don’t know and love Bon Iver already, Bon Iver is a guy named Justin Vernon. Coming off a breakup with a girlfriend AND a band, he ventured up to his father’s cabin in a remote area of Wisconsin. There, he started accumulating songs over a three month period, but he had no plans to release them. However, due to positive feedback from those who heard it, he went ahead and did it anyway, and the rest is indie history.

So the music isn’t the only part of this project that is unique; the conditions surrounding its birth were as well. The music is the recollection of that experience, though, and that’s strikingly obvious in the songs. They’re melancholic, wintry, and bare, but I bet that won’t stop you from obsessing over them. The lyrics are certainly interesting; most of them were written around the syllables he used to make the melodies. But it’s the vocals that will really get you. Like I said, Bon Iver is one guy, which means all the vocals you hear on the record are directly attributed to him, believe it or not. If you’ve already heard the album, you know how truly crazy that is.

For Emma, Forever Ago is a universally haunting album, and it’s startlingly raw emotionally. The music is very minimalist, apart from the vocals. It’s got hooks aplenty to keep you coming back for more, but they’re not the usual temporary pop hooks; these hooks grab onto you and don’t let go. I’m talking about some deeply satisfying, memorable hooks. An instant indie gem, For Emma, Forever Ago is going to be around for a while, but it deserves every second of recognition it gets. This review is short for such an amazing product, but I really believe that reading anything I or anyone else could say about it is utterly futile, and this is something that has to be experienced firsthand. So get to it!