But at the same time, there was Kanye calling. At a certain point I expected it to just stop, so that I could catch my breath – and I had moments like that for sure. So the wide-eyed disbelief of that first meeting on the gallery steps has settled somewhat.'But it feels like it's still going,' Vernon says steadily, sitting on the sofa of his basement studio – a long, airy room looking out over woodland. He has also, I overhear, been asked to be the face of a leading whiskey brand.

When we meet this time, he has already been profiled by Vanity Fair and the New York Times and is set to appear on the covers of both Billboard and Spin. The success of For Emma – the album sales, the world tours and the festival shows – was followed by a range of collaborations: with Volcano Choir and Gayngs and Anaïs Mitchell, and with Kanye West for his album My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, which propelled his music further into the mainstream. The intervening four years have, after all, offered ringing endorsement of his talents. Today, he stands in his front room in green basketball shirt and torn sneakers, looking a little more self-assured. When he spoke, it was with a kind of disbelief that anyone should have heard his songs at all. When I first met him, in the spring of 2008, he stood awkwardly on the steps of Tate Britain, half-shaven in a plaid shirt and carrying his guitar case. The cabin stands not far from here, built by Vernon's father on a rich stretch of land, a quiet patch of wilderness.

The story of its creation, meanwhile, acquired something approaching the air of legend: following the break-up of his band and his relationship, and suffering a serious bout of mono, Vernon left North Carolina and retreated to his native Wisconsin, spending a remote winter alone at his father's cabin, eating venison and writing and recording the nine songs that would make up For Emma. It was an album that received the most rapturous critical reception, and whose songs became the subject of great devotion. In the summer of 2007, Vernon self-released the first Bon Iver record, For Emma, Forever Ago – an album that would see a wider release on the Jagjaguwar label the following February, and wider yet on 4AD that May. It is a move, too, that in its boldness perhaps says much about how this young musician's life has changed in the last four years. In a surprising move, he has chosen not to perform a track from the new Bon Iver album, but a medley of Bonnie Raitt's I Can't Make You Love Me and Donny Hathaway's A Song for You an unlikely combination, but one that in its mingling of longing and isolation nods to familiar Bon Iver territory, and exhibits Vernon's extraordinary voice and phrasing. Vernon is indoors at the piano with his best friend and former bandmate, Phil Cook from Megafaun, rehearsing for an appearance the pair will make on Jimmy Fallon's TV show in two days' time. Spring has come late to Eau Claire this year, and the cherry blossom trees that line the driveway to Justin Vernon's home are only now coming into bloom leaves spreading, petals softening in the early evening sun, the Wisconsin landscape stretching broad and green beyond, as the air is filled with the sound of warm keys and sweet, twisting falsetto.

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