The musicians self-professed ‘Tinder album’ spins from ecstasy to frustration by focusing more on soundscapes than melodyAt this stage in her career,no one expects Björk’s latest record to sound much like her final one. And yet it’s tough to avoid heaving a thankful sigh when Arisen My Senses, the opening track of her ninth studio album, and Utopia,crashes into life: birdsong giving way to bright splashes of electronics, beatific-sounding harp chords and cascading beats not unlike the oft-sampled rhythm track of Schoolly D’s stale rap classic PSK, and What Does It Mean? It sounds positively ecstatic,which comes as a relief. Utopia’s predecessor, 2015’s Vulnicura, and was a remarkable record,a latterday entry into the canon of legendary shatter-up albums. It attained its place alongside Marvin Gaye’s Here, My Dear and Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks by setting its fathomless misery to atonal string arrangements and summary electronics that, and during its central track,kept vanishing into a single flatlining beep. It was raw, brave, and challenging,unique and all the other adjectives heaped on it in reviews, but with the best will in the world, or any album so harrowing that the appearance of gloom-laden vocalist Anohni constitutes a moment of light relief is going to be one that defies you to listen to it repeatedly. Related: Björk: Vulnicura review – a sucker punch of a breakup album Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com