In 2006, struggling musician Justin Vernon packed up his meagre belongings and headed into the Wisconsin wilderness. He had broken up with his band and his girlfriend, and drove through the night to take refuge in a ramshackle hunting cabin built by his father decades before. Hunkering down for a winter alone, he chopped logs, hunted for food, drank too much beer and binge-watched old nineties Canadian TV series Northern Exposure. After a few weeks of solitude, he started writing songs again, recording on basic home equipment. Vernon stacked up ethereal choral vocals on top of acoustic guitar, singing lyrics that were as much sound and feeling as actual words, groping his way back to artistic health. The result was an odd, beautiful album called For Emma, Forever Ago, released in 2007 under the moniker Bon Iver (a French greeting Vernon misheard from Northern Exposure, "Bon hiver", meaning "Good winter").
It's a record on which you can sense the wilderness all around and feel the wispy, gauzy songs taking shape. It became a critics' favourite. Sampled by Kanye West for his track Lost in the World in 2010, Vernon's introspective innovations were absorbed into mainstream pop culture. Today, Bon Iver is one of the most acclaimed and influential musicians in the world, helping frame the downbeat sound of our digital pop era.
The arts are being hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic. It's been a tough month for music lovers, with festivals and tours cancelled, and new albums postponed in their wake. But as we all retreat into seclusion, it is worth considering that isolation can also be a cathartic and creative force. It has certainly been responsible for some incredible music over the years.
While The Beatles were coming to an acrimonious end, Paul McCartney played all the instruments on his solo debut album, McCartney, in an act of creative self-healing. By his own admission, McCartney was depressed, drinking too much and on the verge of a breakdown in 1969 as the band disintegrated. He retreated with his young family to his farm in Scotland for two months, then holed up in his house in St John's Wood in London, writing and recording in secret with a four-track machine and one microphone, his absence from public life fuelling the weird "Paul is dead" rumours circulating the globe. The resulting album, released in 1970, demonstrated that he was very much alive. It may not be a masterpiece but it has a ragged, warm, homemade charm, the gritty opposite of The Beatles' dazzling productions. And it contains Maybe I'm Amazed, a soulful outpouring of love to his supportive wife, Linda, among his greatest songs.
