Under the guise of Bon Iver (essentially a solo project with a band name) Justin Vernon has been one of the key architects of modern popular music. His 2007 breakthrough, For Emma, Forever Ago, was a critically lauded piece of acoustic Americana that filtered folky sensitivity through contemporary pop technology.It inspired a wave of singer-songwriters, among them Ed Sheeran, Hozier, James Blake and Jack Garratt.Vernon's inventive soundscapes made this awkward introvert an unusual ally of Kanye West, leading to collaborations which pushed at boundaries, humanised technology and questioned notions of plasticity in pop.But Vernon did not enjoy fame and after a second album in 2011 he spoke of retiring Bon Iver. He involved himself in other projects like performing live in his home state of Wisconsin.Five years on, though, Vernon has reconciled himself with his "band" and released a third album that is at once his most experimental and most internal; a strange, wracked, fragile masterpiece of hurt, loss, doubt and consolation.22, A Million is so personal it could only really make sense to its creator, yet it is so full of feeling it is impossible not to be moved by it.Song titles are made up of numbers and symbols. Autotune is dialled up to the point that Vernon's voice - once a poignant falsetto - becomes incomprehensible.If opening track 22 (OVER S88N) sounds as if it might have been mangled in a cassette recorder, that's because it was. Not content with studio distortion, Vernon scrunched the tape before re-recording the results. The effect is to intensify the tone of querulous doubt.An accompanying lyric sheet is crammed with made up words and phrases that sound as if they have been wrongly transcribed. It is laid out like a teenager's tribute to the poetry of EE Cummings and the random cut-and-paste methodology of William Burroughs, brimming with whimsical verses that defy interpretation.This would all be simply infuriating were it not for the melodiousness that binds these strange sounds and images together, the feeling stirred up by Vernon's voice, and his gift for chord progressions that sweep you along against your will.He sings with the sad weight of a man who has survived a dark night of the soul, filling his opaque songs with transcendent emotion and otherworldly beauty that can make you feel foolish for even questioning what it could possibly all mean.22, A Million is out now on Apple Music...