Justin Vernon has come a long way since he decamped to a Wisconsin log cabin to make his stunningly introspective alt-folk debut as Bon Iver, 2007’s For Emma, Forever Ago. Since then, there have been Grammy wins, chart-topping albums and collaborations with Taylor Swift, James Blake and Kanye West, and his music has shifted into hip-hop production and electronic orchestration. 2019’s i,i featured a seven-piece band and no less than 39 additional musicians and a choir. Crucially, Bon Iver songs are still strong enough to be performed with just voice and guitar. But the 41-year-old has eschewed the well-worn singer-songwriter archetype in favour of intriguing new shapes. There’s plenty of that at tonight’s gig at Leeds’ First Direct Arena, with an array of sounds ranging from percussion that sounds like an exhaling pressure cooker to robotic vocal effects. This never detracts from the gentle beauty of the songs, and for an arena gig – this one long delayed by Covid – it feels unusually intimate.
