★★★★★
Sound: This self-titled album is the second full length release by Bon Iver. If you haven't listened to Bon Iver before, the group is the brainchild of Justin Vernon, and is kind of an indie rock type of act. Reading about Justin Vernon, you will learn that he seems to recluse himself to a remote location somewhere cold when he writes songs. What he comes up with is unique compositions, which are very melodic - instrumentally and vocally...
- www.ultimate-guitar.com
2012-04-12
★★★★★
For his follow-up to For Emma, Forever Ago, Justin Vernon collects a long list of talent to emerge with a seamless masterpiece. Lush, powerful, layered... this music is held together with a subtly toned undercurrent and distinctive, perfectly harmonious vocals.Bon Iver is a haunting lament at the tail end of love -- on "Holecene" this is perhaps especially obvious ("...at once I knew it was not magnificent... and I could see for miles"), though songs' meanings are buried a bit in the poetry...
- www.ink19.com
2012-02-27
★★★★★
Back in 2007 when the self-released beauty of For Emma, Forever Ago was still awash for many music fanatics, Bon Iver's subtle brilliance was just beginning to be realized - let alone recognized. While it took a year for many to finally catch on, perhaps a year or two for an autotune-influenced EP, Blood Bank, to infuse and appearances on a massive Kanye West album, for others to finally get the brilliance flowing, Justin Vernon's musicianship has merely grown during the last four years...
- www.adequacy.net
2011-12-15
★★★★★
'Like winter sunlight shining through mist' ... Bon Iver If there was reason to doubt Justin Vernon's staying power three years ago it was the seductive neatness of his debut album's backstory: the beardy midwesterner who disappeared into the snowy woods to nurse a broken heart. It suggested fluke brilliance and a future in the Americana undergrowth, where warm reviews mingle with modest sales...
- www.guardian.co.uk
2011-12-12
★★★★★
Goto commentsLeave a commentShare For Emma Was Forever Ago Everything changed about Bon Iver after For Emma, Forever Ago. By now everyone's heard the story of the months-long voluntary solitude he embarked on in the woods of north Wisconsin...
- www.mxdwn.com
2011-12-01
★★★★★
Skyrocketed by raw sincerity and a string of recent kingmaking appearances on Jimmy Fallon and the Colbert Report, the high-powered machine that is Justin Vernon's Bon Iver shows no signs of letting up. Coming on the heels of For Emma, Forever Ago, the cabin-crafted monument to a dead dream, the band's self-titled second full-length explores themes of isolation and longing under surging swells of dripping guitars and absorbing keys...
- www.urb.com
2011-09-12
★★★★★
It's more than a little intimidating to disagree with an opinion as forcefully and skillfully stated as Jessica Faulds' review of the new Bon Iver album. In fact, where my perspective diverges from Jessica's is less in the elements that she actually heard in the album and more in her interpretation of the meaning of those elements...
- www.cokemachineglow.com
2011-07-25
★★★★★
Jagjaguwar The second disc from Bon Iver, the indie folk outfit led by musician Justin Vernon, is less a collection of songs than it is a meditation on place--on how one's locale translates in one's art. The self-titled follow-up to 2008's beloved album For Emma, Forever Ago names each of its 10 tracks after a place (specific or vaguely metaphorical), anchoring the lovely, haunting music in a concrete environment...
- www.relix.com
2011-07-18
★★★★★
Few artists have achieved the type of glowing recognition in such a short period of time as has Justin Vernon over the past three years. By now, his back story is well-known: fronted DeYarmond Edison with members of Megafaun in North Carolina, became disenchanted with life there, left the band, moved back to Wisconsin and drowned his sorrows in isolation, recording For Emma, Forever Ago as a sort of catharsis...
- www.glidemagazine.com
2011-07-11