Despite more than two years of being anchored with family in Iceland and nearly as long without looming artistic deadlines, Björk sounded a little out of breath during a recent phone conversation from Reykjavik. She was on a walk outside during a break at the studio where she was putting final touches on her forthcoming 10th studio album. Not long after, she would travel outside Iceland for the first time since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. On Wednesday, her Cornucopia tour made its Los Angeles premiere, the first of three nights at the Shrine Auditorium.
A few days before, the 56-year-old musician had missed a scheduled call because of an abrupt change of plans brought on by — what else? — creating her album during the pandemic. "Some people I was working on it with got COVID," she said. "So we have to juggle all the plans around, because I'm trying to finish my new album before I go to California."
That album will be her first since "Utopia" in 2017. It's part of a discography that across 30 years has earned her worldwide fame and legions of devoted fans — even as she's roamed further afield of popular music's center and pushed her sound away from standard structures.
