Bjork is back from the depths of despair: Icelandic star's latest is a powerful break-up album, writes ADRIAN THRILLS

PUBLISHED: 01:42, 6 February 2015 | UPDATED: 10:10, 6 February 2015

Ice queen: Bjork has a unique sense of style

Bjork: Vulnicura (One Little Indian)

Verdict: Powerful break-up album

Rating:

When she was brightening the pop landscape with albums like Debut and Homogenic in the Nineties, Björk was constantly springing surprises.

Her vocals were extraordinary, her music wildly imaginative and her sense of style so daring that she turned up at the Oscars in 2001 apparently wearing a giant swan.

But the Icelandic singer’s kooky disguises have since become a tad predictable, and her music too rarefied. Her last album, 2011’s Biophilia, was an esoteric affair with songs about atomic physics accompanied by interactive games, academic essays and a documentary narrated by David Attenborough.

Vulnicura, her eighth solo album, is a different beast altogether — a soul-baring confessional built around a series of vivid emotional dramas. With the science lessons on the back burner, it is Björk, 49, at her most vulnerable.

The album has been released digitally weeks ahead of schedule after being illegally leaked online. It will also be issued on CD and vinyl on March 3, as originally planned, but can be downloaded from iTunes now.

Inspired by the end of her long-term relationship with American artist Matthew Barney, the father of her 12-year-old daughter, Vulnicura traces a story from the depths of despair towards an eventual recovery.

As such, it is wonderfully nuanced, exploring an often contradictory range of emotions in the grand tradition of such classic break-up albums as Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours, Bob Dylan’s Blood On The Tracks and Adele’s 21.

Musically, it also signals a return to the warmer, cinematic feel of the singer’s early solo work. Her avant-garde leanings are still evident in the twitchy electronics of Venezuelan producer Arca and British musician The Haxan Cloak, but the nine songs here are also underpinned by Björk’s own elegant string arrangements.

A diary-like album begins by documenting a relationship in its death throes. On melodic opening track Stonemilker, written before the break-up, Björk sings like a veteran soul diva about her need for ‘emotional respect’.

Growing aware of the warning signs, however, she then admits: ‘I’d better document this.’ And document it she does. By the mid-point of the album, the misery is palpable.

When Björk does a big heartbreak ballad, the sense of wintry desolation is all-consuming, and Black Lake — a ten-minute epic in which one particular chord lasts for 30 seconds — is almost too discomforting to listen to.

Much the same goes for Family, a long, tuneless dirge that is Vulnicura’s low point, both musically and in terms of the singer’s ability to come to terms with heartache. But the darkest hour leads to a new dawn. With Antony Hegarty on backing vocals and Björk singing about ‘dancing towards transformation’, Atom Dance is jaunty and life-affirming, while Mouth Mantra finds her rediscovering her own voice.

When she was brightening the pop landscape with albums like Debut and Homogenic in the Nineties, Björk (pictured in 1995) was constantly springing surprises

Björk knows things aren’t quite so simple. With the final track Quicksand examining the damage a broken union can inflict on subsequent generations, her unflinching honesty remains.

Two decades after leaving indie band The Sugarcubes to turn solo, she hasn’t lost her capacity to surprise.

KATCHING MY I

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Monday, 16 February 2015

Bjork is back from the depths of despair: Icelandic star's latest is a powerful break-up album

Bjork is back from the depths of despair: Icelandic star's latest is a powerful break-up album, writes ADRIAN THRILLS