Into the Woods.(Justin Vernon's For Emma, Forever Ago)

Justin Vernon, a twenty-seven-year-old native of Eau Claire, Wisconsin, is six feet three, big but not heavy, bearded, and often seen in boots and a thick plaid shirt. In February, he became one of the most discussed musicians of 2008 when the independent label Jagjaguwar rereleased "For Emma, Forever Ago," a record he had made himself the previous year, over three months, while living in a hunting cabin that his father built. Until I met Vernon, the story sounded like a commonplace; people hole up to make records all the time. But listening to Vernon talk--which he did deliberately and evenly, with an aversion to jokes and small talk which complicates the plausible idea that he is just as regular as folks get--makes it plain how important Eau Claire is to his work. The word "home" pops up often in conversation. "For Emma, Forever Ago," which appears on many print and Web best-of lists for 2008 (it's at the top of mine), happened because of Eau Claire.

Vernon's story is one of escape and renewal, a road movie that doesn't spend very long on the road. Three years ago, he was living in Raleigh, North Carolina, playing with friends from Eau Claire in a band called DeYarmond Edison, and dating a woman who is not called Emma. (Emma is a proxy name for a woman he dated years earlier in Eau Claire.) DeYarmond Edison made slow, stately music that was rooted in American acoustic sound, and was vaguely related to old blues and to recent American indie rock. Vernon sang in a style close to his speaking voice, low and unaffected, obviously American, though not clearly Midwestern. In March of 2006, Vernon recorded an EP under his own name and called it "Hazelton." He sang two songs almost entirely in falsetto, multitracking his voice until he became his own chorus. This style is distinct from his resting voice in every way--it is unlikely that you would tie the two voices to the same person.

Four months later, Vernon experienced a hat trick of bad times: DeYarmond Edison broke up, Vernon split with his girlfriend, and he contracted mononucleosis, which affected his liver. He subsequently spent a lot of time indoors, watching the TV series "Northern Exposure" on DVD. One episode featured the cast greeting a new snowfall in Alaska with the phrase "Bon hiver," French for "Good winter." Vernon liked the snow, which reminded him of home, and the phrase, which he first transcribed as "boniverre." (He later removed the "h" from hiver because the French word reminded him of "liver.")

"Flume," which is now the first track on "For Emma," was the song that, in November of 2006, brought Vernon home to Eau Claire. There he surrendered to a new voice, and began writing with, and for, the falsetto. Sometimes I am surprised by the fragmentary lyrics on "For Emma"; more often, I am moved by the beauty of Vernon's massed voice, and held in place by the force of each careful, dogged song. You don't need to know about breakups or solitary stretches in the woods to feel a line dragging these songs forward. As pretty as Vernon's musical tendencies may be, the line pulling "For Emma" along is not light and could not have been easily found.

"Flume" works around a shuffling acoustic-guitar chord sequence that could show up in almost any genre of American music. That sequence plays once, and then the game changes, when Vernon's falsetto choir enters, bringing a church with it. The stack of voices is overwhelming--a combination of the secular and the religious in one cloudy mass--and is as exalted as any sound in American popular music today. The opening lyrics of "Flume" are both a declaration and a vague confession: "I am my mother's only one, it's enough. I wear my garment so it shows--now you know." It is easy to believe that his lyrics are "sounds that eventually turned into words," as Vernon once told an interviewer. In "Flume," the language works best as sound--I listened to the album a dozen times before I looked up the words. Among other things, the chorus contains the sequence "only love is all maroon, lapping lakes like leery loons, leaving rope burns--reddish ruse." Starting the album with some word salad turns out to work just fine, as it gives you time to adjust to the power of the singing.

Vernon is intermittently specific. "Skinny Love" begins with a shuffle not so different from the one on "Flume," and it doesn't ascend to Heaven so quickly. The choir is contained this time, maybe only a few voices: "Come on skinny love, just last the year. Pour a little salt, we were never here." Then Vernon's natural voice resurfaces, to repeat ...