Bon Iver @ OVO Hydro, Glasgow, 20 Oct

Almost every music fan in their late 20s or early 30s will know the backstory. After years trying on a variety of ultimately unsuccessful musical guises, Wisconsin’s Justin Vernon retreated to a cabin in the woods and returns with the songs of For Emma, Forever Ago, a softly sung but deeply felt collection that has since been deified as an indie-folk classic. Eschewing the easy life as a heart-on-sleeve folksy strummer, Vernon subsequently headed off down all manner of creative trails, collaborating with Kanye West and Taylor Swift and reinventing himself as both studio mastermind and inveterate musical tinkerer.

Released just before the pandemic, his fourth album i,i, with its unpronounceable song titles like something scrawled in Aphex Twin’s bible, seemed to mark something of a personal breakthrough for Vernon. It’s no surprise that more than three years after its release he's still keen to give it the accompanying tour that it was previously denied.

As a performer with a history of personal demons and an occasionally ambivalent relationship to his own back catalogue, facing the added challenge of playing to his biggest venues yet, the stakes are clearly high for tonight’s show. Can a beloved artist project intimacy on a grand scale?

Opening with the austere Perth, the six musicians are arrayed inside kite-shaped pens of lights, tightly synced to the music. Above their heads a fleet of mirrors rise and fall, forming falling petals, a protective shell, a fleet of hovering birds. Set to blinking lights, the rolling R'n'B of U (Man Like) shows the hallmarks of Justin Vernon’s omnivorous approach to genres, while a series of early i,i cuts showcase the tight musical chemistry of this itineration of Bon Iver.

Image: Bon Iver live at OVO Hydro, Glasgow, 20 Oct by Euan Robertson

The first real showstopper of a sequence comes when the distorted vocal manipulations of 715 - CRΣΣKS give way to a gorgeous finger-picked new song subtly shaded with muted saxophone, rumoured to be called Speyside, and then a beautiful yellow-lit version of Skinny Love that shows every close-harmony group that followed in Vernon’s wake how it’s done.

For an artist who previously had to cancel swathes of shows and seemed deeply uncomfortable with the success his songs engendered, the frontman seems to be – whispers it – having fun. He practically beats his chest during a magnificent Holocene, and sheds any trace of self-consciousness for an arena-worthy version of Blood Bank, dripping in red lights.

Midway through the first song of the encore, a leaf or piece of paper flutters down from the rafters. The singer reaches for it but it’s tantalisingly out of reach. The audience holds their breath. Could this be the thing that spoils the singer’s perfect evening? It’s okay, he laughs. For Justin Vernon and his band, tonight is already a triumph.