Now, Bjork, just days after announcing her new album Vulnicura is to be released in March, saw it leaked all over the internet, spreading faster than a speeding volta.
Like Madonna and her last album, this is apparently Bjork's "breakup album" with her partner/husband(?), former fashion model turned performance/video/installation artist Matthew Barney.
Just nine tracks, albeit many of them lengthy, I strapped on my iPod to get lost in her universe again, and with trepidation. Her last album, 2011's Biophilia left me cold. It wasn't her first album to be difficult listening or challenging (that was 2004's Medulla for me) but the whole construction of the enterprise (the apps, the educational elements, the instruments being built) put the music in second place to the "project" at large. It was the first Bjork album where I felt she seemed lost in the murky depths and noise and bluster swirling around her.
From Vulnicura's opening track "Stone Milker" I was hooked. The voice, up front and center, the wall of lush strings pulling her along and the warmth building with each minute. She was singing about her heart, feelings, emotions and not about rocks and viruses and moon particles. The excitement and hurt is palpable.
Buzzed about producer Arca handles most of the tracks co-production but his very distinct sound (present on last year's Xen album) only bubbles up on the excellent track "History of Touches." Gloomy British electronic soundscaper The Haxan Cloak handles production on only one track "Family," a statement of intent about her current situation. "The death of my family...the mother and the child...the father and the child." No doubt about her daughter with Barney.
The Antony-assisted song "Atom Dance" is a return to their Volta duet but beamed from the moon, all cut-up vocals and skittery strings and beats, where "The Dull Flame of Desire" sounds like a well-oiled showtune in comparison.
The centerpiece of the album is "Black Lake," a ten-minute epic that starts with chamber strings and halfway through leads to 4/4 beats before splintering again and slowing down, the strings (on this song and the album) always omnipresent with the force of waves.
Bjork seems to have finally dropped her love of shrieking horn sections for a return to a string-based world that envelops every song on Vulnicura, much to my mutual surprise and pleasure. "Mutual Core" no more.
Bjork seems to be heartbroken on this album and that couldn't make us more pleased, horrible audience that we are. This is a true return to form we've been waiting for for ages.
