For Emma, Forever Ago

Justin Vernon went to a hunting cabin in Wisconsin after a breakup and a band falling apart, and came out with these nine songs. The story is famous now, but the record earns it. The guitar is plain and close, the kind of fingerpicking you could learn, and then the voice comes in pitched high and layered over itself until one man sounds like a small crowd. The lyrics are often half-formed, sound chosen over sense, and it works because the feeling is exact even when the words are not. It is short, it does not repeat itself, and it ends before it wears out.