“How will I sing us out of this sorrow?" Björk wails over jagged cello arpeggios, six songs into her string quartet-led break-up album Vulnicura. Though heartbreak may be the theme most often stewed and chewed up by singer-songwriters, optimism - a belief in music's healing power - is the driving force of this nine-track record.
Though we might wish Björk cried iridescent neon tears, the album's emotions are familiar enough to imagine her your snotty chapped-cheeked self. Albeit psychologically twisted by an accompaniment of legato strings that collide erratically with squelching beats. "Lionsong" opens with an a cappella trio of panning vowels - "maybe he will come out of this loving me" - reminiscent in some ways of Imogen Heap's "Hide and Seek". It shows that the numerous alt-pop singers who echo Björk's legacy have caught up with her this time, when issues of the heart - rather than innovation - are the core of the compositions.
"History of Touches" is the last hopefully nostalgic track for a while. Lines like "Every single fuck we had together/Is in a wondrous time lapse” float amidst jabbing synth chords. The song flutters out into digital pops and the tone darkens as the video diary structure descends into grunge. On "Black Lake" a drooping Purcell-esque minor march grumbles beneath images of pulsating wounds, apocalypse and drowning. In "Family" Björk shakes the image of a broken family in the face of her lover (composer and father of her child, Matthew Barney) over a collage of sounds like fabric ripping away from a wall. And as the wonky organ riff in "Notget" trails off, a whispered cry of "deaaaaaath" fades away into silence like the final tail of reverb on heavy metal vocals.
Despite the influence of Chilean electro producer Arca, there’s a deliberate evasion of entrancing beats for the majority of the album. The mind stays focused instead on the Keatsian "glut thy sorrow" lyrics, but is never dragged under by melancholy, even when Anthony Hegarty joins on backing vocals. Instead their duet, moving in octaves, sounds as hopeful as a young teenager’s fantasy. Vulnicura is not Björk at her most radical, but will surely become a cherished aide to many in moments of emotional collapse.
Overleaf: Watch the video for "Lionsong"
