I may have pulled down 70 gig in the last few weeks, but the 42 meg : Bon Iver For Emma album may have had the highest Signal:Noise. It’s born out of the classic Thoreau Walden mythology : “After the breakup of a band, relationship, and bout with sickness, Vernon left Raleigh and moved back to Wisconsin spending three months in his father’s cabin in the woods of northern Wisconsin. He did not intend to write or record any music during the time but rather to recuperate from the events of the previous year. Eventually a record began to evolve during this cathartic time of isolation.” I’ve got Track 9 “re: Stacks”, playing on repeat. Not sure why it’s affective, but the point of music is to find u when u need it / least expect it eh. Bon Iver on HypeMachine which is always a good way to listen into a new artist that drifts by + piques yer interest.

re : Stacks by Bon Iver

This my excavation and today is kumran
Everything that happens is from now on
This is pouring rain
This is paralyzed

I keep throwing it down two-hundred at a time
It's hard to find it when you knew it
When your money's gone
And you're drunk as hell

On your back with your racks as the stacks as your load
In the back and the racks and the stacks are your load
In the back with your racks and you're un-stacking your load

I've twisting to the sun I needed to replace
The fountain in the front yard is rusted out
All my love was down
In a frozen ground

There's a black crow sitting across from me; his wiry legs are crossed
And he's dangling my keys he even fakes a toss
Whatever could it be
That has brought me to this loss?

On your back with your racks as the stacks as your load
In the back and the racks and the stacks of your load
In the back with your racks and you're un-stacking your load

This is not the sound of a new man or crispy realization
It's the sound of the unlocking and the lift away
Your love will be
Safe with me.

Photo Credit : Sad Mascot, Flickr.

Henry David Thoreau, Walden : “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear, nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion. For most men, it appears to me, are in a strange uncertainty about it, whether it is of the devil or of God, and have somewhat hastily concluded that it is the chief end of man here to “glorify God and enjoy him forever.”

Photo Source : Thomas Lowery dot com

Bonus Link (from Artist’s Official Site): Bon Iver tour Australia in January, playing Melbourne January 18th… that would be in 2009, any1 want to go, see now I’m soliciting co-concert collaborators via blog. Don’t want to make this vehicle too emo. Here’s them playing re: Stacks at the social in London, 2007.