MAKE A DATE WITH BJöRK
The Icelandic icon calls her new release her Tinder album, but there’s no swiping left here. By
Whenever Björk releases a new album, I am both incredibly excited and trepidatious. I know I’m in for a treat, but I’m also dreading it because Björk requires undivided attention. Her music is like a treasure hunt: it’s a journey with little surprises along the way, but the payoff comes after quite a bit of labouring. Her music is, often, the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
And in this age of distractions, it’s difficult to put time aside to sit down and consume her music. Musician Trent Reznor once said people used to treat music like a novel, but now they treat it like a magazine. Björk is a novel in a time of magazines.
On her previous album, the gorgeous Vulnicura, released two years ago, Björk ripped your heart out and ate it while it was still beating. It documented the emotional cyclone she got into after the end of her long-time relationship with artist Matthew Barney. It produced one of the greatest moments of her career: the epic and intense 10-minute Black Lake.
While Björk often has a marvellous sense of humour in her music, her strongest points are when she’s enveloped by intense emotion: be it the heartbreak and anger of Black Lake or the raw, naked love affair of Pagan Poetry, off Vespertine (2001). To enjoy a Björk album, you have to dive in and fully submerge yourself. It’s a lot of work: not because it’s pretentious music, but because it’s worth it.
One of the best things about Björk is her paradoxical nature as a musician: she embraces the warmth of nature as much as she does the aloofness of tech.
On much of Utopia, her ninth studio album, released last month, she juxtaposes bird sounds with glitchy electronic beats. It doesn’t feel like nature is fighting technology, but rather that they are coexisting in some kind of musical, well, utopia.
As the title suggests, Utopia is dreamy, lush, beautiful and calm. There are no storms. The weather’s always pleasant. That’s not to say it’s boring: it’s just meditative and calm, despite some of the lyrics (more on that later). The beats are sparse and slow, but at times also complex and layered.
Over 71 minutes, Björk invites the listener into her universe, which brings to mind a Garden of Eden, but with hallucinogenic drugs. Twelve of the 14 tracks are co-produced with Venezuelan musician Arca (check him out if you’re not familiar with his music — he’s worth it).
Utopia is about rediscovering love, with Björk jokingly telling an interviewer that it’s “my Tinder album”.
The opener, Arisen My Senses, has a light stomping beat, anchoring lyrics about rediscovering sex: Legs a little open, once again/ awaken my senses.
It’s followed by Blissing Me, which covers the emotional side of new love. It’s about falling for someone new over music, through sharing MP3s. It’s very old-school, like when your high school or university crush made you mixtapes (yes, even us millennials did that).
One of the album’s highs, Body Memory, is 10 minutes long. It was written as a response to Black Lake, although sonically it’s closer to 2004’s Oceania. It’s a stunner that slowly reveals itself, much like a new lover over time. It’s a song, she told Pitchfork, about surrendering to a new chapter in one’s life.
It also touches on the dance between new lovers: My sexual DNA/ X-rays of my Kama Sutras/ summons different bodies/ compares spines and buttocks/ and back of necks.
But love isn’t only reserved for romance. On Saint, she personifies music, moulds it into the shape of a woman who soothes: She always knows when people need stroking/ and is attracted to deathbeds and divorces/ I dreamt she cared for my dying grandfather/ lying naked face down on his bed.
Utopia is also about female dominance, a world devoid of men — just in case the album cover (which features a vagina and Fallopian tubes covering Björk’s face) wasn’t a clue. Watch me form new nests/ weave a matriarchal dome, she sings on Future Forever.
On Tabula Rasa she sings about not allowing our children to follow in the footsteps of their fathers. The opening line is, We are all swollen from hiding his affairs. Later in the song she sings: Let’s . . . break the chain of the fuck-ups of the fathers.
On Sue Me, Björk attacks her ex who sued her for custody of their daughter. The lyrics are brutal and cutting. I’ve ducked and dived like the mother in Solomon’s
Tale/ to spare our girl/ I won’t let her get cut in half ever, she sings, before continuing: He took it from his father/ who took it from his father/ who took it from his father. Let’s break this curse so it won’t fall on our daughter/ and her daughter/ and her daughter/ won’t let this sink into her DNA. Ouch.
In interviews, Björk has compared Losss (another album highlight) to the magnificent Pagan Poetry. She sings about how we have all weathered suffering and how it’s important to move on from hurt: “I
. . . didn’t harden from pain,” she declares.
Some say as we get older we return to the things we loved and knew when we were children. Now in her 50s, Björk is summoning her younger self and referencing herself. Not because she’s run out of ideas, but because some art needs continuation.
Utopia is a gloriously optimistic work. Björk is, as always, in top form. Ready to dazzle. Slowly. Over repeated listens. It’s worth your patience.
L