![]() Do we listen to a musician’s melancholy songs because we want him to feel better, or because it’s comforting to know that people who are famous and accomplished don’t have it all figured out, either? Vernon followed “For Emma” with “Bon Iver, Bon Iver” (2011), a Grammy-winning album of exquisite, forlorn chamber pop. Emma wasn’t a person, he explained, but a foggy, wallowing state of mind. His songs felt authentic and intimate, yet they were filled with invented places and characters, private symbols, and impressionistic scraps of language. The odd thing about Vernon’s music, which fans related to because of its folksy vulnerability, was how much he withheld. He retreated to his father’s cabin, in the woods of Wisconsin, where, after spending a few weeks drinking beer and watching movies, he picked up his acoustic guitar, wrote some songs that reflected his bleak, wintry surroundings, and began experimenting with new ways of singing them. Within a year, about a quarter of which Vernon spent bedridden with mononucleosis and then with a liver infection, his relationship with his bandmates and a girlfriend were in shambles. Born and raised in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, Vernon moved to Raleigh, North Carolina, with some friends, to try to make it as a band. Vernon had lived the kind of quaint, rooted existence that seems increasingly rare, given the cosmopolitan ambitions of most professional musicians. “For Emma,” which was released in 2007, became the type of album that fans believe has magical, healing qualities, an aura that had something to do with the record’s glum backstory. His recordings gave the impression of someone forcing himself to venture far outside his comfort zone they communicated a sense of solitude and drift, even if, as was often the case, you couldn’t make out exactly what he was saying. Vernon’s falsetto caused an obvious strain on his voice, making it sound weary and brittle. About a decade ago, when Justin Vernon, the principal member of Bon Iver, was recording the songs that became the band’s début album, “For Emma, Forever Ago,” he realized that ranging just above his usual register made it easier to sing about memories that were otherwise too painful to recount. Singing in falsetto is, by definition, a kind of false projection into the world. Justin Vernon’s voice is one of the most recognizable instruments in indie music.
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