Bon Iver - For Emma

Nearly everything about the song For Emma exhibits some degree of plurality: Justin Vernon’s choir of falsettos, multiple guitar overlays, the lyrical dialogue between two lovers separating, and a bountiful horn section. Yet, somehow, the track still sounds strikingly isolated. Circumstances, in this case, are relevant. In 2006, Vernon pulled the old Thoreau and cloistered himself in a remote cabin in Wisconsin’s wintery country, only to return with the brainchild for his debut as Bon Iver—For Emma, Forever Ago. This single, with the aforementioned title track and an exquisitely dampened b-side (Wisconsin), is inescapably bound to Vernon’s purging solitude—all we can hear is him—and anything supplemental just sounds like the phantasmagoria of his own imagination. [Jorge Marticorena]