LOS ANGELES TIMES: In the twilight hours, that liminal space between sunset and sunrise, the eyes and ears are prone to trickery. The imagination takes over; hazy objects resemble ghosts, and faraway sounds evoke werewolves. But on the precipice of Sunday morning, amid Hollywood Forever Cemetery’s tombstones and mausoleums, the misty fog and leaning palm trees, Bon Iver provided an ethereal soundtrack to sunrise. It was dreamlike as indie folkster and Wisconsonite Justin Vernon walked onstage with his band, Bon Iver, around 6 a.m. It was almost completely dark when the band opened with Brian Eno-esque layers of sound — their guitars and beards bathed in an icy hue from the blue stage lights — and awakened the slumbering (and some still partying) masses sprawled across the lawn. “We’ve never done anything this weird before,” Vernon said, between the slow-burning stomps and sweet falsetto acoustic solos from Bon Iver’s 2008 album, “For Emma, Forever Ago.” Bon Iver’s performance capped off six hours of events curated by the band, including Vernon’s handpicked music (a play list ranging from Dirty Projectors to Sam Cooke) and films (“Bottle Rocket” and “Planet Earth”). The audience began to arrive around midnight, the witching hour, with blankets, picnic baskets and wine in hand. MORE
RELATED: Following the break-up of his previous band DeYarmond Edison, Justin Vernon secluded himself to a 
cabin in northwestern Wisconsin for three months planning to “hibernate.” Three months of solitude resulted in the creation of For Emma, Forever Ago. “All of his personal trouble, lack of perspective, heartache, longing, love, loss and guilt that had been stock piled over the course of the past six years, was suddenly purged into the form of song.” [1] The record is entirely the creation of Justin Vernon, “despite its complexity, the record was created with nothing more than a few microphones and some aged recording equipment.” MORE