Justin Vernon has travelled far from his indie-folk roots since his debut album as Bon Iver almost singlehandedly invented the genre back in 2008.

There have been detours into R&B, electronica, hip-hop and orchestral arrangements but his last release, last year’s Sable EP, felt like he was coming home again. Or, perhaps, heading back into the woods where he created that landmark album For Emma, Forever Ago.

Focusing on just guitar and voice, it stripped his sound back to its organic foundations. Now comes a full album – his first in six years – building on that template with the addition of subtle electronica and pedal steel guitar.

The influence of co-producers BJ Burton, who heavily influenced the sound of Bon Iver’s 2016 album 22, A Million and introduced dissonant noise to the previously mellow palette of Low (as well as producing Charli XCX and Miley Cyrus) and Jim-E Stack, can be felt in the expanded range.

And, while Emma was filled with melancholy, Fable Sable is the sound of a man overwhelmed with happiness upon meeting the one he will fall in love with, exemplified in John Wilson’s video.

Vernon says: “I knew what kind of record I wanted to make the day we made Everything Is Peaceful Love. I always knew that would be the feeling I wanted to share first. I wanted the video to just be people smiling uncontainably… yhe idea that happiness and joy are the highest form and the true buoyancy of survival, and even taking yourself less seriously could heal the world.”

For Vernon, the new songs are neither a new chapter, nor a return to the beginning, but an epilogue: a saga in which one person becomes two and sadness transforms to unbridled joy in a vibrant future filled with light, purpose and possibility: a partner, new memories… perhaps a family.