Björk

Vulnicura

This narrative thread seems to have focussed Björk's compositional powers, and Vulnicura has a momentum and coherence lacking in her recent efforts.

It’s simultaneously her most mature feat of arranging and almost psychosomatically affecting. 

The musical moments that capture Björk’s heartbreak are frequently stunning on Vulnicura, but the whole thing is a little shy on hooks and reasons to take the grueling journey with her often.

Despite their meticulous craft, these songs don't feel like curated artefacts--they feel raw, unquiet, still moving. Vulnicura might tell an old story, but it still feels new.

Her ninth record ... is the obligatory break-up album, one sung with extraordinarily renewed power. It hardly seems like a conscious uncoupling: the Icelandic diva bleeds utter devastation, drenched in strings and despair.

Vulnicura is very clearly a break-up album, perhaps the most unflinching, honest account of the deterioration of a relationship by a major artist in memory.

On Björk’s previous albums, her phrasing conveys a joyful and unrestrainable lust for life; on Vulnicura, it instead brings a desperate plea for emotional clarity.

It’s not an easy listen, but a brave, beautiful and affecting album – an attempt to find order in chaos that, as she wishes for it, offers a “crutch” to the heartbroken.

After the wild beach party of 2007’s Volta and the shiny wonders of 2011’s Biophilia, Vulnicura is a windswept trek of a record. But one which gradually repays its difficulties with the raw exhilaration of survival.

Icelandic singer, songwriter, producer Björk is back with another record, and it's one filled with romantic heartbreak and whimsical instrumentation.

Arranged for voice with orchestral strings and electronic beats, Vulnicura is a unified set of nine dark, swarming, melodically distended songs.

Vulnicura is emotionally bare and, as a result, remarkably complex, demanding of an active listener, but it’s also one of Björk’s most poetic records in a long career.

These nine ballads are stripped to essentials - beats, strings, stirring vocals - full of beautiful and eerie contrasts that highlight Björk's loneliness, anger and fleeting moments of optimism.

You could say there’s something gimlet-eyed about a woman who realises her relationship is collapsing and automatically thinks: still, great material. But it’s nothing if not honest. And besides, on the evidence of Vulnicura, she has a point.

‘Vespertine’ is a master-work by my reckoning, an emotionally resonant record that truly articulated the innermost desires of its maker in a way that felt less intrusive, more inclusive.

Vulnicura doesn't have the reach-out-and-grab-your-attention quality of Björk's more technicolor works, but it possesses a dramatic weight in its own right.

If Vulnicura never truly allows us in close, it’s still a beautifully tragic view from the edge of the ‘black hole’.

Vulnicura is gruesome because of its trying structure, abandoning accessibility for labyrinthine ideas that casually stumble off-course.

A belief in music's healing power is the driving force of Vulnicura.

One listen to Vulnicura confirms what's been evident for a long time, but will still continue to come as a disappointment for many: Björk firmly belongs to the world of the avant-garde.