It’s been two years since Bjork released her heartbreak album Vulnicura to critical acclaim and her follow-up Utopia is equally sure to win over hearts, broken or otherwise. In a reversal of tone, Utopia re-appropriates Vulnicura’s imagery of closing wounds into a powerful declaration of renewed openness to the world. Bjork offers a mission statement of sorts in Loss, saying, “How we make up for (loss) defines who we are”, and, in Utopia, she offers tools of recovery in repetitions of her former expressions of sexuality and agoraphilia.
This combination of retrospection and optimism is the truest triumph of Utopia and it acts as a synthesis of Bjork’s eclectic musical history. From the pastoral flutes in the title track, which seem to hark back to Biophilia, to the feral passions of Body Memory, reminiscent of the enigmatically primal Submarine, the Icelandic star presents a consolidation of her life’s work in Utopia that is both familiar and ground-breaking, sensitive and blunt, and which demonstrates a complete command of the wide array of instruments and talents at her disposal.
