Album review: Bjork - Vulnicura

4/5

It’s around the start of ‘Family’, the sixth song on Bjork’s ninth album, Vulnicura, when she asks if there’s a place “where I can pay respects for the death of my family”?, that you realise you’ve gone through a whole packet of tissues in drying up your tears.

This is a break-up album to be filed alongside Bon Iver’s For Emma, Forever Ago. Whereas the beauty masked some of the pain on Justin Vernon’s debut, things are much rawer here, charting Bjork’s falling-out-of-love with the American artist, Matthew Barney. In a recent interview, the Icelandic singer, who adorns the album cover dressed like a blossoming latex flower, said that when she listened to the songs, they felt like diary entries.

On ‘History of Touches’, which sounds like a Red Bull-less Chvrches, Bjork is waking up in the middle of the night to declare her love, shortly clarifying that she feels like this is “our last night together”. After the breakup, the senses heighten on the cinematic ‘Notget’, with an orchestra channeling Bjork’s emotions: “Without love, I feel the abyss, understand your fear of death.”

The centrepiece of it all is the pulsating ‘Black Lake’. It’s here you feel the full force of the co-production between Bjork and beatmakers du jour, the Haxan Cloak and Arca — she is coming to terms with the end of the relationship. The playful ‘Atom Dance’ features the unmistakable vocals of Antony Hegarty and, over eight minutes, contorts into various states of beauty.

Over its nine songs, Vulnicura clocks in at close to an hour and, coming two months early due to an online leak, will be most people’s go-to album at their moment of need, offering a shoulder to cry on. Just remember to have a packet of tissues close-by before you press play.