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Artist: Björk Album: Utopia Released: 24th of November, 2017 Listen: Spotify Apple Music
Björk Guðmundsdóttir
For those of you who don't know, Ms Guðmundsdóttir, mononymously know as Björk, is an Icelandic art pop/experimental singer, songwriter, producer, DJ, street fighter, actress and activist. Björk turned 52 two days before the release of Utopia, her 9th album in her solo career that began 24 years earlier in 1993. In this time, Björk has released a further 2 soundtrack albums, Drawing Restraint 9 (2005) and SelmaSongs (2000) which she contributed to the film 'Dancer in the Dark' where she was the lead actress, which garnered her a "Best Actress" win at the Cannes Film Festival in 2000 and an Oscar nomination for "Best Original Song" ("I've Seen It All"), among other awards throughout her career (though never a Grammy). She has also released an iconic videography as well as an intimidating number of B-Sides (the singles section on Spotify looks like /popheads when a major album is released at midnight) and mixes outside of her studio albums.
I could honestly publish further write-ups for the rest of Björk's acclaimed discography, but instead all I can do is recommend you listen to them yourself and hopefully enjoy them as much as I do. Here are a few of many highlights to start you off: - Venus As a Boy - Its Oh So Quiet - I Miss You - Sweet Sweet Intuition - Jóga - Sod Off - All Is Full of Love - Original Mix - Unison - It's In Our Hands - Where Is the Line - The Dull Flame of Desire (ft. Antony/ANOHNI) - Mutual Core - Stonemilker
Utopia
If you Google "Utopia" like the guy in 'Creatures Features' googling love, you get the following definition:

An imagined place or state of things in which everything is perfect

Bjork's definition of the cliche is obviously a bit more eccentric:

How we can live with nature and technology in the most optimistic way possible

In 2011, Björk released her 7th studio album, Biophilia. The album was constructed using nature as an inspiration, such as the time sequence in opening track 'Moon' emulating the phases of the moon and was orchestrated using instruments she had made for the recording of this album. Infamously, she released the album alongside a series of apps which are now used in Nordic curriculum to teach children about nature. The album and its corresponding era, apart from being her most underrated in a career of being undermined in my opinion, kind of acted like a mission statement for arguably her second career peak.
Before the recording and release of Biophilia, Björk had received treatment for a vocal nodule. Simultaneously, she was getting more involved with activism and environmental advocacy whilst Iceland was going through a financial crisis after the banks crashed. Regarding all this, in an interview around the time of the Biophilia cycle, Björk said:

So, on so many different levels, there was this message that all the old systems don't work anymore, you gotta clear your table and start from scratch."

In hindsight, there is a some crushing cosmic irony here...
Fresh off the toes of Vulnicura in 2015, Björk released her 9th studio album, Utopia. Before the album could stand for itself musically, it was already going to be viewed in the context of Vulnicura, her "break up album" from husband and father of her daughter, Michael Barney. The album was all about the dissolution of a relationship and has been critically acclaimed whilst also being described as her darkest album yet. Despite the ending of a relationship documented on the album, behind the album an artistic relationship was forging between Björk and Venezuelan electronic/experimental producer Arca. Arca went on to tour with Björk during her Vulnicura Live tour whilst the pair started working on the follow up.
Our first introduction to the album arrived on the 13th of September, with a track titled "The Gate". The first thing of note when listening to the song was how much the track sounded exactly like what you'd expect a Björk and Arca song to sound like - rather than a song by Björk, with production by Arca like much of Vulnicura - with their most definitive trademarks on display. The track itself was another mission statement with the instantly-iconic lyrics:

My healed chestwound, transformed into a gate

... creating a bridge from Vulnicura which Björk described as hell to her as-yet-unnamed forthcoming album's utopia.
Then came the video. Directed by Thomas Anderson Huang and lauded by Pitchfork as the best music video of 2017, Björk and her Gucci dress accepted love into her heart through the hole left by loss of love (and had sex with herself, obviously).
With the album a few weeks away, most of Bjork's fans were worrying (or eagerly anticipating) about another potential leak, after Vulnicura leaked 2 months earlier than planned. And almost simultaneously, Björk released the second single "Blissing Me" as the album surfaced online. There is almost a poetic significance of this when listening to the lyrics of the blissed out, Vespertine-esque track.

Sending each other MP3s, falling in love with a song

Björk hasn't really been a "streaming" artist. As I mentioned before, she said "all the old systems don't work anymore". Like any artist that has been active since before the turn of the millennium, the industry and the diffusion of art doesn't work like they used to. Most of her fans buy physical CDs and vinyls, so talking about sharing songs (MP3s) with someone is just a lovely and cordially insular sentiment - whether she means sending them a Spotify playlist, a link to a leaked Openload file or ripping songs using YouTube to MP3 and making a CD for someone (guilty!). On top of this, Björk also released a video for the song, being exclusive to Facebook and Amazon Music the first week, and then a vertical version to Spotify - similar to Selena Gomez this year.
In the interim between Vulnciura and Utopia, Björk - through no intentional posturing of her own, but rather through some viral videos of her DJ sets and some interviews - came across as inspired and inspiring. Her personality spreading out from these moments, either as being a proclaimed fan of RuPaul's Drag Race, writing an unforgiving post about her music and the Belchdel Test, as well as other extra-curriculars such as her MoMA exhibition and a long-running professional relationship with fashion designer James T. Merry. As well as this, Björk called out, though not by name, controversial Danish director Lars von Trier for harassment - with whom she worked with on the 2002 film, Dancer in the Dark.
Then came the album cover. Shot by Jesse Kanda, almost-inseparable Arca collaborator, with the notably-heart-shaped facepiece provided by James and the striking makeup styled by Berlin drag queen Hungry. Unlike other artists, Björk tends to bring new creative people onto each album cycle, such as Arca as co-producer this time around and Hungry, whilst also frequently working with past collaborators such as Rabit and M/M Paris, who also made contributions to the album process. Unknowingly, this process of collaboration would be thematically present on her forthcoming "Tinder album".
On the 23rd of November at 0:00:01, my ears were deafened by the twerping of Venezuelan birds before the electronics landed and Björk floated into the song, opening with "Just that kiss, was all there is... Legs a little open, once again", showing that Björk is ready to love again. The song samples an early Arca track "Little Now A Lot", although completely blown up into euphoric clatters, as well as potentially having additional vocals from Alejandro 'Arca' Ghersi himself. The cascading sounds show an evolution in both Arca and Bjork's everchanging sonic pallet. From hearing the whole project, 'Blissing Me' and 'The Gate' seem like outliers in comparison to this track, which I would say is our first proper reveal of what Björk's utopia sounds like.
Follwing the aforementioned singles comes Bjork's first ever "title track". The song feels like a new beginning for Björk - as "The Gate" fades out we arrive in Björk and her flute band's utopia. The song's intro lasts a whole 1 minute and 29 seconds of flutes and bird songs before Björk begins singing "bird species never seen or heard before". The subsequent music video contains alien bird-like creatures flying around the digitally-imposed utopian landscape, essentially showing exactly what Björk is singing without any abstract interpretation unlike the rest of her videography. This is her image of a utopia. She later chimes:

My instinct has been shouting at me for years,
Saying, "let's get out of here!"

This is more than likely a reference to her past relationship with Barney, and she follows these lyrics up with:

Huge toxic tumour bulging underneath the ground here

...stating that at one point she probably felt her relationship was a utopia, but there were always underlying factors killing it.
On Vulnicura, the centrepiece of the 9-track album was a song called "Black Lake", a sprawling 10-minute diss track to her ex-husband. Björk has since said that she finds the song difficult to listen to and perform as she finds the subject matter partly embarrassing, Utopia's centerpiece is a direct response to the Vulnicura track. Where "Black Lake" was about finding the ability to express your ugliest feelings, "Body Memory" is about finding everything else you once knew. Björk was in a relationship for 13 years, but rather than starting her journey for finding herself again before co-habiting life, Björk goes straight back to the beginning. The first verse of the song is about, like a lot of Utopia, nature. The verse begins with Björk painting a picture of Iceland, before having an outburst of green-envy at the simplicities of nature. On "Alarm Call" from her 1997 magnum-opus Homogenic, Björk climbs to the top of these mountains and growls:

I'm no fucking Buddhist
But this is enlightenment

Perhaps Björk is angry at the cliffs "showing off" because they can stand strong and tall as they always were, and her outburst will not have any reprecussions, whereas her marriage ended viscerally with legal battles, media coverage and a young daughter in the middle. I think most people can relate to going back to your origins when your life is shrouded in that "fucking mist", and this is were Björk's body memory starts to kick in again.
In Verse 2, Björk retreads Vulnicura's "Notget", which was about coming to terms with the death of a relationship. Where the lyrics and beats on "Notget" portrayed anxiety and panic - in "Body Memory", Björk revisits the grapple of trying to keep the relationship afloat out of the fear of the unknown that comes afterwards, before her body memory kicks in again and she surrends to the "unknown", and most importantly, the future. Björk has a history with the word "claustrophobic", and here the brass, not unlike Volta, builds and animals start to appear, further expanding the landscape the song represents.
Verse 3 finds Björk back at her lovelonging present. She admits that the feeling of recreating and finding love again is as unfathomable as "threading an ocean through a needle". Having been with Barney since the year 2000, she feels like she doesn't know what she is doing, especially in a new society of singletons she was blind to before, where she is older and dating has changed with new rules and options (like Tinder). However, as an adult, her body memory returns and she goes with the flow of her "limbs and tongue". The instrumental here adds a choir as if she is ready to let other people into her life again.
Where verse 3 was about love, verse 4 is about sex! These are probably some of Bjork's most explicit lyrics, and her body memory doesn't seem to have told her to stop using beastiality as a metaphor. Nonetheless, Bjork's reintroduction to her single sex life has her comparing the bodies of her new partners in order to "redeem her body" by allowing her to do what she wants with it, using the imagery of "beastility" to embrace her wild side. The instrumental becomes more frantic here, with the choir now sounding more like Biophilia than Vespertine, as her love-life gets busier and more physical.
As I said in regards to verse 2, this song has a lot to do with coming to terms with the anxieties and adrenaline of the unknown. From 1986, Björk acted as the vocalist in Icelandic alternative rock band The Sugarcubes, although she admitted that the style of music she performed with the band was not her style. When The Sugarcubes disbanded in 1992, Björk started her solo career by moving from Iceland to the rave scenes of London and Manchester and the sounds of underground techno and acid house, which caught her ear and can be seen as the singularity of the electronic direction of the rest of her career. This is what inspired the sound of her first official album Debut in 1993, and inspired the themes of her sophomore, fan-favourite Post in 1995. She sings:

I wasn't born urban...
Love lured me here

For the first time on Utopia, she isn't singing about romantic love, but rather the love for beats and electronics. "As a music nerd, I just had to follow my heart. and my heart was those beats that were happening in England," she told TIME in a 2015 interview. It's interesting to compare this era of Bjork's career with her current career - before she was moving around to find her collaborators whereas nowadays her collaborative pallet resembles a scratch map, with technology allowing her to reach out to other artists more easily.

Into a stagnant state
My myths, my customs, ridiculed

The lyrics may allude to the idea that, in order to earn her career, Björk had everything stripped from her: her rural background, her customs and her comforts. Now she's back here again, with the security blanket of a long-term relationship gone and everything around her has changed. However, this time - several decades into her career, Björk doesn't have to prove herself to anyone, and her body memory has kicked in on a Brooklyn dance floor; she has found this part of herself again.
Verse 6 introduces a new theme which presides over the rest of the album: the patriarchy. Michael Barney famously sued Björk for custody over their daughter and this is likely one of the most upsetting things to happen in the deterioration of her relationship and the life she led under it. 8 minutes into the song however, Björk has gained and earned a fight-or-flight intuition from the landscape of electronics and animal cries before her, and most importantly, she plans to stand up for herself as a women - a message that lands fittingly into a year where women hit critical mass and finally men are being held more accountable than ever. The instrumental, although the fluttering precussion continues, settles down as if she is back to reality, and that she'll have to "deal with shit soon enough."
The epic ends by transitioning quietly into the first of two Arca-less songs, "Creatures Features". The instrumentation is co-produced by new collaborator Sarah Hopkins, who provides pan flutes to the quietest song on Utopia. The title may allude, again, to her animal instincts. This song further drives the most persistent themes on the album: music and looking for love. As I see it, Björk (whether intentionally or not) sings as if she is in dialogue with herself. Her voice is more muted than usual and presents itself as very inward. Personally, I relate a lot to the lyrics of this song as well as the succeeding song, "Courtship". Björk was likely referring to this song in her press circuit when she called her 9th studio album her "Tinder record". The song starts with the lyrics:

He turned me down, I then downturned another
Who then downturned her
The paralysing juice of rejection

Björk enters into a new dating game in a more skeptic social climate. Nowadays, love exists in data pockets and geocoding and courtship is initiated through little more than few seconds of physical attraction. Björk further explores the skepticism through the lyrics, such as:

Will we stop seeing what unites us
But only what differs

Björk could be saying that courtship is rather make-or-break when you move past physical attributes and onto more intangible aspects of a person, and as a divorcee these thoughts are probably always at the front of Björk's mind. This ideas leads nicely into "Losss".
Having slightly left Arca behind since "Body Memory", the signature Arca sound comes crashing back on the most abrasive song of the record. At this point on the album, Björk has accepted that the wound from Vulnicura will always sting a little and in finding new love, she accepts the pain she could go through again in order to feel "full satisfaction". Of all of the feelings Björk has explored and rediscovered, this track puts all of it in context of her most devasting loss and I believe is the most introspective song on the album. In a macro sense, Björk belongs to a group of female performers who present themselves as vulnerable and hard-as-nails at the same time. Here, Björk softens her edges contrapuntally to the onslaught of Arca beats and becomes vulnerable to fulfill her desires. The song then fucking goes off with the closest thing Björk will probably have to a drop this side of Homogenic, with wobbling voices as if her utopia is sending out transmissions for her return.
The hammering of beats doesn't stop there, as Björk fires shots at ex-husband Matthew Barney again, but this time more direct and clear on "Sue Me". Probably the closest Björk has come to a chorus in years, she repeatedly yells "sue me, sue me all you want" becoming more agitated but self-assured as the song progresses. Barney sued Björk as he believed she was spending too much time with their daughter, Ísadóra. Björk has released songs about her daughter in the past, for example, one of my favourite Björk songs "I See Who You Are" (especially the Arca-assisted Vulnicura-era live version) from 2008's Volta. Where she was affectionate and maternally proud on that track, Björk shows the defensive side of her motherhood here. Almost directly referencing "Quicksand", the closing track on Vulnicura, Björk widens her aim and blames the patriarchy for the way Barney is handling their family drama, using their daughter as either a prize or collateral damage.
From this point on in the album, Björk asks more of her utopia, and not just for herself but all women in general. Having blown off some steam in the past few tracks, for the first time on the album Björk starts to look forwards into the future, having already looked at her past. At this epoch in Bjork's life, she has earned the right (and integrity) to impart some wisdom on the younger generations beneath her in which she has a surprising number of fans. On "Tabula Rasa", Björk The Sage uses her pain and experiences to inform those who have a "clean slate", telling them that they have:

A clean plate: not repeating the fuck ups of the fathers

I have seen a few reviews and opinions online regarding these lyrics, men claiming that this sounds like a lecture they don't deserve. Personally, in a year where dictionary.com named "complicit" the word of the year, I think these men aren't listening. Regardless, Björk continues to talk to the generations, especially women, beneath her - telling them:

To rise and not just take it lying down

This year gave us the Women's March and the #MeToo movement, so these lyrics couldn't have come at a better time. And as mentioned before, she also called out von Trier as trying to belittle her ("[he] created for his team an impressive net of illusion when I was framed as the difficult one") and, well, dismissed the claim that she was difficult onset and ate a blouse ("this matches beautifully the Weinstein methods and bullying. I have never eaten a shirt. Not sure that is even possible"). She then finishes the song by reminding her audience that "you are strong". Sonically, this song takes a more welcoming approach and allows her to be heard, whereas on "Losss" and "Sue Me", the instrumental had Björk shouting to be heard.
"Claimstaker" sounds as if Björk has found her utopia and she is setting up camp. With lyrics alluding to Debut's "The Anchor Song", Björk goes back to nature and calls it her home, and mentions the cliffs she had disdain for in "Body Memory". In terms of literal sounds, the vocal layers throughout and on the outro recall her 2004 album, Medúlla - which could be seen as her first extreme turn into experimentation from which she will likely never return.
Björk leads her troop of flute players through a beautiful instrumental track named "Paradisia", her second instrumental track of her career following "Frosti" from Vespertine (2001) - which is notably a close sonic sister to Utopia, before transitioning into "Saint" (I tend not to notice when "Paradisia" has ended and "Saint" has begun when I listen to the album in the car). At first I had no idea what she was singing about and I didn't care because the climaxing flutes in this are like nothing I've ever heard before. Lyrically, the song is about music anthropomorphised as a woman, and its healing abilities - whilst addressing a number of people who might need some of that; from refugees to widows. Songwriters in general tend to paint ideas in an abstract sense, talking about spirituality and using metaphors, and Björk is one of them. However, a thing I enjoyed about this album is, despite the fact the sound of the album is like a wacky, woodwind world, the lyrics are more down to earth than ever. Her uses of locations (hospitals, Brooklyn, record stores), colloquialisms (singletons) and items (thermal blankets) grounds her to a relatable level.
The final track on the album is ceremoniously titled "Future Forever". Despite mentioning in the run-up to the release of Utopia that it is important that we have a "manifesto, an alternative" in "this time of Trump", the lyrics don't explicitly consider the macro-environment of the real world outside of her personal connections to nature and cities and the patriarchy. The first lyrics of the song...

Imagine a future and be in it

...are the closest we are going to get - but what a lovely message. In 2017, the existence of many minorities was seen as a threat or inconvenience to those in power. 800.000 Dreamers had their citizenship jeopardised as the US government rescinded DACA, families were torn apart by Trump's travel ban. Even outside of the US, gay marriage and abortions are still illegal in Northern Ireland despite these being legal in the rest of the UK (had to shout out my country!), it's illegal to be gay in 72 countries, 15 million girls became child brides this year... you get the idea. Björk telling everyone that she'd invite to her utopia that they matter, matters.

Hold fort for love forever

Back to the major themes on the album, Björk reminds everyone that, despite all she has been through, that love is still possible. She then sings...

Trust your head around

This is a reference to the last track on Homogenic (and unofficially the first song on Vespertine), "All Is Full of Love". Björk described the song at the time as "the birds coming out after the thunderstorm" which is fitting considering the inclusion of birdsong on this album and the "thunderstorm" that could be seen as Vulnicura. It is also worth noting that Vespertine was written about her newfound love and future husband Matthew Barney. "Future Forever" ends the illusion of a utopia, but the dream still continues even after the album has concluded.
As I mentioned before, Björk took a dive into experimental/electronic music in 2004 with Medúlla, although she was never-not left of centre even before then. I feel a problem with artists being described as "avant-garde" is that everyone has their own ideas for what this actually means, which is straight up contradictory. Many fans want Björk to return to Post-era Björk, other fans stopped playing attention after Vespertine and music critics criticise her lack of conventional melodies or her subject matters (nature mostly). It is the responsibility of the artists to push culture forward, not the music blogs and critics who get to write about it. Although Björk isn't exempt from criticism, it's hypocritical for non-musicians (even me) to evaluate how avant-garde a project is when it can be moving forward in any number of different directions - it's best we sit back and let the artists show us what art can be, then figure out how to interact with it. Therefore...
The reason this album is my Album of the Year is that it's themes completely sum up 2017 for me whilst sounding absolutely nothing like anything else I have heard this year (or ever). My conquests as a "singleton" and considering myself as a "music nerd" make me relate to a lot of the album personally, but outside of this the album itself is a masterclass in collaboration and creating worlds. Credit to a 52 year old for being able to write unwithheld about love and sex and pain and motherhood, and still somehow be impacting and relatable to a 21 year old and everyone else in between or otherwise. It is also reassuring that a female artist who is so many decades into her career can continue to deliver a consistently spectacular output and carve out a whole lane for herself to the point that "Björkian" is a recognisable adjective and she can still produce art alongside the next generation of artists she inspired years behind her, such as Kelela and Grimes - the keyword being "alongside". In Utopia, under Bjork's "matriarchal dome", everybody gets to be in it.
Favourite lyrics:
Blissing Me

Is this excess texting a blessing?
Two music nerds obsessing
Cliffhanger like suspension
My longing has formed its own skeleton

The Gate

My healed chestwound, transformed into a gate

Body Memory Half of the damn review was about that one song so honestly - the whole damn thing
Features Creatures

When I hear someone with same accent as yours Asking for directions with the same beard as yours I literally think I am five minutes away from love

Losss

Loss of love, we all have suffered
How we make up for it defines who we are

Sue Me

He took it from his father
Who took it from his father
Who took it from his father
Let's break this curse

Tabula Rasa

My deepest wish
Is that you're immersed in grace and dignity
But you will have to deal with shit soon enough

Saint

She reaches out to orphans and refugees
Embraces them with thermal blankets
I've seen her offer empathy to widows
She attends funerals of strangers

Future Forever

Imagine a future and be in it

Thank you for reading my thoughts on this album, I put more effort into this than some of my work at uni lol.
Points for Discussion: - What were your favourite lyrics from the album?

• What were your favourite "moments" on the album? Mine being the ~drop on "Losss" and a lot of her delivery, such as "sending each other these songs" while the instrumental momentarily buries her on "Blissing Me".
  
• What are your experiences with the album?
  
• When did you get into Björk, and how do you think this affected your experience with the album?
  
• How do you feel about Arca as a collaborator? How do you feel about his billing on the album (both on the physicals and on streaming)?
  
• What (inevitable) other iterations of the album or album tracks would you like to hear? We already have a different version of "Blissing Me" with serpentwithfeet and a 'harp version', is there anyone you would like her to work with in remixing tracks?