You’d have to be skeptical of anyone claiming to completely “understand” Justin Vernon’s songwriting at face value. For one, his layered falsetto tends to blend into the rich instrumental textures he’s created, to the point where certain phrases are impossible to catch without the lyrics in front of you. For another, his poetry is unconventional. Obscure turns of phrase, esoteric words, and off-the-cuff observations are everywhere. Both lyrically and musically, it often feels like Justin Vernon is speaking a different language altogether. And yet, the music he’s created as Bon Iver, personal as it may be, has proven to be undeniably relatable.

Pitchfork’s Mark Richardson made the observation that the creation myth behind Bon Iver — “a bearded dude from small-town Wisconsin retreating, heartbroken, to a cabin to write some songs” — corresponds to the sense of “escape” and “intimacy” his music gives us access to. It’s a pretty astute observation, and with For Emma, Forever Ago, the brilliant debut in question, the narrative of escapism adds to the music’s evocative power. Escaping emotional turmoil, escaping to nature, escaping to solitude, and finding solace in personal reflection and music. It’s the kind of broadly applicable sentiment we can all connect to in our own way. Bon Iver however, isn’t just an introspective escape. Instead, it’s an album that turns outward, redefining the Bon Iver project with poetic imagination and radical ambition.

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Download: Bon Iver – “Towers”

In the beginning of the liner notes to the album, Vernon thanks “the people who became the DNA of this album”, before listing a cast of characters, musical and otherwise, who were a part of the creative process over the past few years. The spirit of the statement signifies a major shift between For Emma and its companion piece, Blood Bank, and Bon Iver. Where For Emma was stripped-down and introspective, these songs are simply bigger, blooming with lush orchestration. It’s communal rather than individual. Instead of guitar and light percussion, performed almost exclusively by Justin, we get layers of synthesizers, heavy drums, and even saxophones, supplied by a cast of collaborators. Album opener “Perth”, with its elegant horns and pounding drums cues us into all this, and lead single “Calgary” is another perfect example.

None of this, however, is to say that Bon Iver sounds out of place next to Justin’s earlier work. As big and universal as some of these songs feel, they are, like their predecessors, rooted in personal ruminations, and most importantly, their emotional content is communicated through the gorgeous, soulful instrument that is Vernon’s voice. Take “Holocene”, which is loosely tied around a few personal stories, and culminates in the realization, “and at once I knew I was not magnificent”. You can take a stab at what it might mean to him, but it almost seems a better exercise to assign your own meaning, or simply to marvel at the beauty of it all. The album’s best moments, “Holocene” among them, are stunning.

Bon Iver is an album that thrives on abstraction. It’s less about narrative than it is about mood. It’s more about texture, feeling and imagery than it is about any single subject in particular. Even a song like “Beth/Rest”, which builds off ’80s synth keyboard chords that might sound more at home on a Whitney Houston ballad, doesn’t sound out of place, given the context of the songs before it. The liner notes also cite fellow collaborator Kanye as a direct influence, and “Beth” demonstrates plenty of resemblance. It’s a stadium-ready anthem, with flashes of 808s & Heartbreak autotune crooning, and all the subtlety of the theme song from Chariots of Fire.

Why the song works has everything to do with the mood of the album. During his interview with Stephen Colbert a few days ago, Vernon joked that this time around, you won’t find yourself “laying with your face on the floor”. While he might have been poking fun at the sullen, isolated tone that’s become so synonymous with Bon Iver, he was also alluding to just how different Bon Iver feels. Its sound is expansive, and orchestrated to perfection. But more importantly, it’s decidedly redemptive and uplifting. It’s hard to imagine the day when we’ll stop rehashing the legend of Bon Iver, the solitary, cabin-dwelling sad man with a guitar. But like any great artist, Justin Vernon is adding exciting new chapters to his own story, and writing in a vocabulary all his own.

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Download: Bon Iver – “Holocene”