It sometimes feels like this album was made in a blog-rock lab: Wisconsin man decamps to a cabin post-breakup of both a relationship and his band and makes a wrenching, beautiful album that takes the world by storm and makes him a superstar. But the story misses how gut-wrenching and arresting the album is, the best folk album of the '00s, the emergence of a new genius in indie music. This album is impossible to replicate, so Bon Iver haven't tried, reinventing and reworking their sound over every album since. But it started here, and this record is an Essential.