The songs revolve around the melodies — big, spectral, swooping things — and the words are secondary to the feelings they evoke. Often when singing, Vernon lands on cryptic words: “acrost,” “melic,” “noachide” and so forth. The meaning is in the melody, the texture, the implication. “I’m not really asking you to hear what I’m saying too much,” he said, “because I would have spoken the words harder.”

He’s also learning to keep some things for himself. “It was important for me to discard the storytelling aspect of it,” he said. “It’s such a weird thing: People sing sad songs and then they have to sing them all the time.” His solution was to create songs “so unspecific that I’m not actually going to use words that have specific meanings.” But that vagueness has the effect of inviting people in.

- Justin Vernon, Interveiw with NY Times