The song is sort of like a meditation on this and the reason why I wanted the beat, or the mood of the song to be a little feisty, is because it’s sort of a confrontation.
Snap out of it. If you want a union, you have to focus on the things that we have in common’. When people get stuck on focusing on the things that separate us and then they’re complaining that there isn’t a union.
On Fossora, the search for nuance sounds urgent, even harrowing. The album’s thunderous opener, “Atopos,” features Björk singing, in an agonized tone, that “to insist on absolute justice at all times / it blocks connection.” Its message is both personal and political, a call for fractured homes to work things out. I told her that in the United States, extreme partisanship has made compromise seem fantastical. “You start talking about each other’s kids,” she suggested. “What do you want for them ? I think it’s more about the future and where we’re going. Take the heat off the moment, because it’s unsolvable.”
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The song, she said, was also inspired by the fallout from #MeToo. She aligned herself with the movement in 2017, publicly alleging that she’d been abused on a film set earlier in her career. But she worries that name-and-shame campaigns don’t always serve healing and compassion. “If you cancel everyone, that’s not a solution,” she said. “Especially with younger males, they have to have an opportunity to evolve and grow and learn.”
It’s not a coincidence that when I wrote this song, Trump was still the [United States] President. I think it was just a few months before the election when Biden got in. The gap between Democrats and Republicans in US was widening. And I feel like it’s happening in a lot of other countries at the moment. So ’Atopos’ is kind of about this gap widening and how to overcome it.
Sometimes, when I really love someone, I will have an interrogation lyric and it’s disguised as my doubts, because I want to be nice – but it’s actually their doubts. / Il arrive, lorsque j’aime véritablement une personne, que je m’interroge à travers des paroles de chanson que je fais passer pour mes pensées, parce que j’ai envie d’être aimable - mais ce sont en réalité les doutes de cette autre personne.
Like lovers, or friends. When we hang out, are we going to focus on the things that that we have in common ? That we both like the same kind of music ? Or are we going to focus on what we don’t have in common ? That one of us likes sports and the other one visual art. Or [that we are from] different generations, or whatever it is that separates people. Different food tastes or whatever.
I feel like, in a lot of lot of friendships or love relationships, it’s a choice. When you hang out with that person, are you mostly focusing on what you guys have in common ? Or are you focusing on the things that separate you ?
J’habite près d’une plage à Reykjavík, et même en cas de confinement très strict, je pouvais m’y promener. Et puis bien sûr, faire des randonnées en montagne... nous passons beaucoup de temps dans la nature ici. Et même en ville, la plupart des magasins sont restés ouverts. J’ai réussi à écrire un album entier sans pause voyage, ce qui était absolument délicieux ! Je ne suis pas restée autant à la maison depuis l’âge de 16 ans - j’ai adoré ça !
It’s about coming down from the cloud and landing on the ground. Both in terms of the soundscape – we have bass and clarinets and sounds coming from down in the ground – but also in terms of the lyrics. All the songs I’ve written for the past five years have been about leaving this digital dream and landing on the ground, trying to realise the dream, carry out the manifesto and put it into action.
Le nouvel album est ma façon de décrire le fait d’être à la maison et de vivre dans mon petit trou, de se terrer avec des amis et la famille et de s’enraciner.
Then of course there’s this album, just saying goodbye to a mother, and also having a teenage daughter who is becoming a grown-up, leaving home. And so there have been several crossroads in my life and I feel like we’ve done it all with equilibrium and dignity and no arguments, so I’m pretty proud of that.
There’s a lot of songs that are very calm and then they have a slow build up and its maybe a little bit based on sort of how we were chilling in the pandemic in our houses and making our homes into restaurants and chill out and psychology sessions with each other. But then usually on a Friday night we still need to kind of dance a little bit so we just stand up and change our living room floor into a club. So, yeah…I wanted to try and capture all of those things.
The colour palette on the album are very earthy colours : dark, dark red, and dark, dark green. And trying to isolate the focus on this particular nesting, digging into the ground feeling.
I’m just a music nerd. I would love to be in a Thai punk band and do a string album in Mexico City and run a discotheque in Kenya and I just don’t have time to do all those things.
