Björk’s new album is a love letter to optimism
La diva islandaise est de retour.
La diva islandaise est de retour. Avec son nouvel album Utopia, Björk nous plonge dans un monde paradisiaque : chants d’oiseaux, flûtes cristallines et mélodies envoûtantes… A 52 ans, l’artiste revient sur son univers, ses anciens démons et « l’urgence » de se tourner aujourd’hui vers l’optimisme. Rencontre.
What comes after heartbreak? For Björk, it’s “a love letter to enthusiasm and optimism,” she said. Björk’s darkly formidable 2015 album, “Vulnicura,” reflected the breakup of her decade-long relationship with artist Matthew Barney in songs of nearly paralyzing pain and simmering anger, weighted with dissonant, dramatic strings.
2.But her new album, “Utopia,” prizes airiness: the breath that powers voices and flutes; the atmosphere where birds fly; structures and tempos that change freely rather than being locked to a beat. The album is the latest iteration of Björk’s career-long fascination with how nature and technology can interact.
THAT POST-TRUMP FEELING
3.In an interview at her apartment in Brooklyn, New York, she said “Utopia” had long been her working title for the album. The 2016 election of Donald Trump only strengthened her determination to envision hope. “If optimism ever was like an emergency, it’s now,” she said. “Instead of moaning and becoming really angry, we need to actually come up with suggestions of what the world we want to live in, in the future, could be. This album is supposed to be like an idea, a suggestion, a proposal of the world we could live in.”
4.Björk’s proposal involves “that feeling, postTrump, when everything’s gone horribly wrong,” she said. “And you escape to an island, and there’s a lot of women there with children, and everybody’s playing flutes, and everybody’s naked, and there’s all these plants you’ve never seen before and all these birds you’ve never heard before, and orchids, and it has that feeling of pioneering into a new world.”
SEXUAL HARASSMENT
5.But Björk has been ruminating on the past in the wake of the sexual misconduct allegations against Harvey Weinstein and others, and has decided to reckon with it. In a recent telephone call, she addressed an episode from her life that she had decided to air. In October, she posted on Facebook that she had faced unwanted touches and sexual advances from a “Danish director”: clearly Lars von Trier, who directed her in the 2000 film “Dancer in the Dark.” “I don’t want to be self-important in this,” Björk said. “There are women out there that got it way worse than me.”
6.But when reading about Weinstein, she said, she was struck by “how he used the media against the ladies.” Stories had circulated at the time of filming that Björk was “difficult” on the set. But she said: “I was very conscientious. I showed up for every shoot on time,” until there was a dispute over control of her music.
7.“When I talked about this project with Lars, he always promised me I had full control of my music,” she said. “But I was turning up at dance rehearsals, and somebody else had been editing my music in a way that was totally musically wrong. And they would keep telling me, ‘Oh, it belongs to us now, it’s not yours.’
The 2016 election of Donald Trump only strengthened her determination to envision hope.
8.“After two months of just turning up for every single thing, and really just accepting all the harassment and just becoming part of the whole — just keeping on doing what I was told, basically — I had one weekend where I stood up. I could stand up as a musician and say, ‘I’m not returning back to work on Monday unless I get full control of my music.’ And that took one day. On Monday night, they said yes, and then on Tuesday, I returned to work.”
9.After Björk’s Facebook posts, von Trier’s assistant told Rolling Stone, “Lars declines the accusations Björk has made, but doesn’t wish to comment any further.” The Guardian reported that von Trier had told a Danish newspaper that he had not sexually harassed her. “That was not the case,” he said. “But that we were definitely not friends, that’s a fact.” Attempts to reach von Trier for comment for this article received no response.
BJÖRK’S UTOPIA
10.Björk described a far happier working environment during the making of “Utopia.” The new album barely resembles music for pop radio playlists or dance clubs. It’s often dense and disorienting, with contending layers of vocals, flutes and percussive sounds. The songs 8. to stand, stood, stood up tenir tête, se rebiffer. 9. post ici, message / Rolling Stone magazine bimensuel américain / to decline ici, réfuter / to report rapporter, signaler / attempt tentative, effort. 10. barely ne… guère / contending concurrent, antagoniste / layer couche, strate / vocals chant / are akin to chamber music and to the electronic experimentation of Björk’s collaborator throughout the album, the electronic musician Arca, who grew up on Björk’s music.
11. Arca, who has also worked on tracks for Kanye West and R&B singer Kelela, joined Björk partway through the making of “Vulnicura”. While Björk’s many previous co-producers have been enlisted to help execute her ideas, “Utopia” is closer to a full partnership.
12.“At first we were really surprised because the generational gap is pretty large between us, and then we figured out that philosophically, we share a lot of things. And there’s an optimistic and a celebrational element in both of our music that we really like,” Björk said.
MAGIC FLUTE
13.For “Utopia,” Björk turned to the flute, the instrument she played growing up. “My flute side has been dormant for a long time,” she said. To record the music she had composed on her computer, Björk gathered an ensemble of a dozen flutists, all women, for “Flute Fridays” in Reykjavik.
14.“I tried to get as many colors out of the flutes as possible,” she said. “I miked them differently. Sometimes I had 12 flutes, sometimes six. There was alto flute, bass flute, tenor flute. They’re treated a lot, with a lot of effects, or they’re really clean, with nothing on them.”
15.“We went between the churches in Reykjavik, trying to get the right sound,” she added. to be akin to s'apparenter, ressembler à. 11. track morceau, titre / partway through au cours de / to enlist faire appel à, mettre à contribution. 12. gap fossé / to figure out ici, aborder. 13. Magic flute réf. à l'opéra de Mozart, La Flûte enchantée / dormant en sommeil, inexploité / gathered réunir. 14. to mike ici, enregistrer / to treat ici, travailler (en pré-production). “Plus, I recorded a lot of the flutes in my cabin by the lake — trying to create this world where you have people hanging out in your living room, playing flutes and singing and making beats, but it’s part of real life.”
16.Her new songs also take up the more immediate pleasures of music and burgeoning romance. In “Blissing Me,” she sings about “two music nerds obsessing,” falling in love by “sending each other MP3s.” In “Courtship,” she looks into software-assisted dating. “He turned me down/I then downturned another/who then downturned her,” she sings, over chords built from flutes, and bursts of sputtering percussion hinting distantly at techno.
17.There’s still some lingering resentment and sorrow in songs like the defiant “Sue Me” and “Tabula Rasa,” and broader thoughts of solace in “Loss,” an elegiac melody strafed by a frenetic beat. But Björk wanted the album to look ahead. “'Vulnicura’ was the end of a chapter, and this is the beginning of a new chapter,” she said. 15. cabin chalet / to hang, hung, hung out traîner, passer du temps (dans). 16. burgeoning naissant / romance histoire d’amour, idylle / to bliss (néologisme) remplir de bonheur / nerd ici, passionné, dingue de / courtship cour (séduction) / dating rencontre(s) / to turn down rejeter / to downturn (néologisme) rejeter / chord accord / burst explosion, jaillissement / to sputter pétarader / to hint at laisser entendre, suggérer. 17. lingering persistant / resentment ressentiment, rancoeur / sorrow tristesse, chagrin / to sue poursuivre en justice / Tabula Rasa (latin) table rase / solace consolation, réconfort / to strafe mitrailler / to look ahead se projeter vers l'avenir.