Picasso had his blue period. Welcome to what Björk calls her fungus period. The Icelandic musician’s 10th album, her first in five years, sees her surrounded by psychedelic mushroom shapes on the cover and likening love to “fungal cities subterranean” in the lyrics. In explaining her concept she has been clear that this is not the same as making music inspired by trees and the putting down of roots, despite these songs being created during a rare extended period spent static in her homeland. That would have sounded more “severe and stoic”, she said, whereas mushrooms are jolly little forest folk. She translates the title as “She who digs”.
In fairness, as someone who has now spent far longer making abstract music defiantly lacking in melody than she did releasing hit singles, these days Björk’s idea of what fun sounds like is probably not the same as yours. The main instruments here, aside from her unmistakable, vaulting voice, are six bass clarinets, low and strange, giving a modern classical feel. The excitement comes from the occasional arrival of gigantic techno beats, provided with some help from Indonesian duo Gabber Modus Operandi (“gabber” being the particularly frenzied hardcore subgenre pioneered in the Netherlands). The sounds that appear towards the end of Atopos sound like the repeated violent slamming of a door.
While the roots are absent, the family tree is here. Both of her children sing on Fossora: daughter Isadóra on the soft, exquisite Her Mother’s House, and son Sindri on long, complex Ancestress. The latter is a eulogy for Björk’s mother, Hildur Rúna Hauksdóttir, who died in 2018. It sounds proud and defiant rather than grief stricken over clanging bells, rising strings and awkward electronic beats. The real misery was on her 2015 album, Vulnicura, a bleak exploration of her separation from the artist Matthew Barney that was a seriously difficult listen.
This time, though no one will mistake it for the charming dance-pop of her early solo work, there is some comfort and warmth in the sound. Freefall is a stunning, vulnerable love song delivered with a fast-changing string quintet. Allow, like her last album, Utopia, sees her voice floating over multiple airy flutes.
As ever, she’s so far removed from everyone else in music that these songs make most sense when the listener is fully immersed over an extended time period. There’s no point having them pop up amid lesser mortals on a Spotify playlist. With this one, it’s worth digging deep.
