There's a lot of great indie-folk out there. I'm a big fan of Fleet Foxes, Sufjan Stevens, Iron & Wine, The Tallest Man on Earth...these are some of my favorite artists of the 21st century. And yet, out of the huge pool of talented folk artists out there, somehow it was this guy who won two grammies.
Everybody likes to talk about the back story to For Emma, so here we go. Justin Vernon's girlfriend left him and his band broke up, and then, at his darkest hour, he secluded himself in a cabin in Wisconsin and poured out all of his feelings into music and recorded this album. It's a portrait of all of his pain and heartache and everything he was feeling at the time, a classic romantic story of art from adversity, blah, blah, blah...and that's why we're supposed to love this album and this guy. Listen, it's a true stereotype that often great art comes from heartache and trouble, but in order for that truism to be in effect, you have to already have talent. Otherwise, all you produce is music that's both awful and obnoxiously self aggrandizing.
Most of the songs are little more than acoustic guitar and vocals, which wouldn't bother me if they were any good. Oh, let's talk about those vocals. Justin Vernon sings primarily in falsetto, and it really doesn't sound good at all. He just doesn't have an appealing falsetto, and it's very grating. Singing almost exclusively in falsetto very rarely works, and if you're considering it, you need to ask yourself a question – are you Wayne Coyne? If the answer is “No,” save the falsetto for when it's needed.
I could deal with the falsetto if there was anything to these songs, but there isn't. It's just some annoying dude screeching his personal problems over folk chord sequences that were played out sometime in 1964. For some reason I can't fathom, everybody loves “Skinny Love” - I hear it at every coffee shop I go to, and a lot of my friends whose only exposure to Bon Iver is that song really like it. He drops the falsetto at least, for part of the song, but the wannabe cathartic chorus is just obnoxious, and I couldn't tell you a thing about the rest of the song.
Every other track just blends together into a glob of acoustic nothingness, held together only by “heart.” Listen up, Ma-Ti, I feel for you, honestly. I believe that this was a hard time in your life, and if creating this album helped you get through it and recover, that's great, seriously. But music isn't good just because it's sincere and emotional. Those are factors that can make music that's already good better.
I'll try and find some nice things to say about For Emma. It doesn't sound awful – I mean, it's mostly acoustic folk music, it's kind of hard to screw that up soundwise, so I can have it playing in the background and not be horrified or anything. It's mercifully short, at only 37 minutes. I guess the chorus to “Creature Fear” is alright, with the only nice melodic turn on the whole album. And I kind of like the little slide guitar touches in the title track, although the backbone of the song is as underwritten as anything on here.
However, sounding inoffensive doesn't mean the album is inoffensive. It's almost completely devoid of any interesting musical ideas, and Justin Vernon shoving his bleeding heart in my face makes the album irritating instead of just boring. It's hard for me to believe that a short folk album could be so offensive to my tastes, but not as hard as it is for me to believe that For Emma somehow has a metacritic score of 88. The only reasons it's not getting a lower score from me are that I have certainly heard worse, and it sounds organic and it won't make your ears bleed or anything. If you want an introspective, intimate modern folk album, there are tons of sad dudes out there with beards and acoustic guitars who make better music than this. Get an early Iron and Wine album or something. Avoid this self-indulgent swill like the plague.
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