Volta - Björk
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Metascore

Generally favorable reviews - based on 35 Critics What's this?

User Score

Generally favorable reviews- based on 130 Ratings

  • Summary: The typically eclectic guest lineup on Bjork's first studio album in three years includes Timbaland, a ten-piece all-female horn section, and members of Konono No. 1, Lightning Bolt, Antony & The Johnsons, and LFO.
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 29 out of 35
  2. Negative: 0 out of 35
  1. As with much of her past work, it’s almost embarrassingly human, sometimes sounding too close to you to believe it’s not your own.
  2. Initial listens leave the impression that Volta is a top-heavy release, but as with Vespertine repeat visitations see the record smoothing and flattening out, with consistency becoming apparent over a shorter period of time than with many a Bjork LP before it.
  3. 'Volta' is another amazing statement of intent - full of hope, eccentricity and wonderfulness.
  4. Even Björk's misses are more exciting than most of what we currently call hits. [12 May 2007]

See all 35 Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 51 out of 71
  2. Negative: 8 out of 71
  1. 10
    Fantastic, massive, true, limitless, full of hope, full of energy... Volta has a beauty in not a normal way, it lives not in you ,but, through you, all around you... It`s eternal like energy itself. Expand
  2. ChrisG
    8
    Profoundly experimental, sketchy, brilliant (at points), head-scratching and quasi-fun. Some tracks really shine like Pneumonia and Innocence, while others flounder and become restless beasts (The Dull Flame of Desire / Declare Independence). But a good B album is better than many. She's still a unique force in the music scene and shows no signs of musical fatigue. Collapse
  3. mikes.
    5
    Well if you strip down all the experimental production choices you would have a very boring album. Instead you have a just semi-boring album. If the production was better it would probably be a average to above average album. But the production is weak. Bjork is retreading familiar territory here and she sounds very similar here to vespertine, with the exception that the production now is not as fresh nor as ground breaking as it was back in 2001. The songwriting isn't as good, the melodies aren't as good, and the production is stale and uninspired. A poor, disappointing release from an artist that had previously been inventive and creative with each release; she has slipped into a groove. An artist that relies on her reputation as a innovative artist, repeating the same formula since 2001 hurts her reputation and will most likely disappoint. Expand
  4. musicistam
    1
    Figure-skating judging rules seem to apply; critics have been charitable w/reviews because it's Bjork, and no one wants to say the emperess has no clothes (or no songs.) It sounds like she just sang bits of lyric ideas into her laptop, and rather than flesh them out to full songs, just left them at that. Awkward phrasing, bad vocals (just listen to the first minute of Wanderlust), overlongs songs (Earth Intruders could be cut in half) and virtually no melodies...and bad lyrics. Expand

See all 71 User Reviews