“Arisen My Senses,” “Blissing Me,” and “Features Creatures” all use music as a metaphor for the pain and pleasure to be found when in love. Speaking of powerful elements, Björk’s own admitted geeking out over music is on full display here. Those damn birds even serve to strengthen this thematic string as Björk bemoans the patriarchy or a failed relationship, the natural world beckons throughout, reminding the artist and listener that there are more powerful elements at work here. The gravitas of the subject matter and the way the album seamlessly weaves throughout each hints at the ways they are intrinsically connected. Lyrically, while the media’s narrative will almost certainly be the romantic healing on display throughout, what Björk has actually created here is a pastiche of her relation to romance, the natural world, music, sex, reciprocity, feminism and the titular utopia. Both simultaneously add warmth, levity, and a widescreen organicism to the recordings that hasn’t ever been present in Björk’s recorded output and as a result, what this album has to offer feels like both a progression of the soundscapes begun on Vulnicura and also a wholly singular work in her catalogue. Where Vulnicura sometimes felt cold and alien, despite the soul-bearing nature of the lyrical content, Björk, again working closely with Arca in addition to new collaborator Rabit, holds onto the lush alien sounds of the former album, but adds two significant and album-defining sonic textures: flutes and birds. Over-publicized as her “Tinder record,” there isn’t anything remotely slinky or overtly randy as a tinder exchange, rather Björk creates a billowy postmodern masterpiece of romance in 2017, the tender ways it teases and rewires our brains and puts them on a permanent pleasure setting and the ways in which, even in the pain of loss, there is beauty. Regardless of how or why it hovered around the zeitgeist so long, it was undeniable that Bjork had found a fresh creative vein and was set to drain it for all it was worth.Ĭue Utopia, in which Björk has set out to assumedly conclude what she began with the brokenhearted narratives of Vulnicura by offering a record of musical warmth that embraces the romance of budding intimacy without ever forsaking the pangs of its absence. Whatever the reason there was no doubt that Björk sounded energized in the most sorrowful way and despite her pain, it felt like she finally - again! - had something important to say and found a sonic partner in the distorted art-ambience of Arca. Maybe it was the quality of that record, or maybe it’s resurgence of popularity come ‘best of’ lists at the tail end of 2015, or the prolific nature of writing partner Arca in the years following. Perhaps this could all be due to a few factors revolving around Vulnicura, a record that had significantly stronger legs than the over-baked and underwhelming duo - trio for some - of releases that preceded it. Just two months shy of a three year wait - the quickest since the wait between Post and Homogenic - the downtime somehow feels even briefer than that, especially by Björk’s standards. Nipping the always-engorged hype of seemingly never ending studio updates and teases in the bud, Björk recorded and released this record in an atypical fashion: quickly. The expectations are high, the concept lofty, and the stakes relatively low. By Dylan Pennell ( this point in the album cycle and in her career it would practically be a waste of print(/bandwidth?) to detail the context of Björk’s latest release Utopia.
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