Utopia

It is musically heady and rawly autobiographical, translating the most intimate moments into towering, skywritten love notes. It’s ruled by a divine feminine energy that interrogates toxic masculinity and, more subliminally, environmental issues. ... In other words, it’s a journey that’s easy to want to take with her.

It’s an album you’ll want to return to again and again.

Utopia is the perfect whooshing winter record, just in time for the bitter chill. [No. 149, p.53]

The Icelandic icon moves ever closer to the Platonic ideal of what it means to be Bjork. [Dec 2017, p.50]

Utopia is full-on music-theater unlike anything Björk has yet attempted, and the rare tenth album by such an established artist to genuinely surprise with unforced and meaningful reinvention.

Utopia feels like both a journey and a collection of statements that define and affirm who Björk is.

Utopia is both resolutely avant-garde and absolutely beautiful, a combination those who associate experimental music with dissonance and ugliness will find utterly paradoxical.

It’s tactile and visual as much as aural, a continuation of her richly rewarding collaboration with Venezuelan-U.K. electronic artist and producer Arca.

At 72 minutes, this is the longest studio album of her career. Björk doesn’t find love with three chords and the truth, she finds love through an endless interrogation of every note there is.

Utopia is almost completely a sensory experience, fantastical soundscapes designed for secret snowflake rituals and Valkyrie picnics. In the midst of so much esoterica, it’s hard sometimes not to miss the more accessible Björk of the ’90s and early 2000s.

Together [Björk and Arca], assisted at points by a 12-piece Icelandic flute ensemble and the Hamrahlid Choir (in which Björk herself sang as a teenager), they grow a thriving sound world rich in nuance and detail.

The dark liquid that once represented Björk's emptiness becomes a source of love that gushes and flows through her. Where once it felt suffocating, here it feels open and endless.

Utopia has a unique sound within Björk's discography yet manages to live comfortably alongside the rest of her albums (its closest sonic equivalent is probably 2001's Vespertine).

If you’re willing to give it your full attention, this is a frequently stunning record. It may often be difficult, but like most hard work, Utopia reaps its own rewards.

Utopia isn't quite as idyllic as its title implies, but its mix of idealism and realism makes it an even greater success as a manifesto for radically open love and as a document of thriving after loss.

Not every song sees atmosphere, theme and emotional power meld seamlessly--a collab with composer Sarah Hopkins called Features Creatures feels like a b-side--but when those elements coalesce the result is all-encompassing.

The set radiates playfulness and pleasure – the opener "Arisen My Senses" is a breathless barrage of abstract beats and pop timbres, a musical multiple orgasm. But Utopia's no more "pop" than Vulnicura, and not all shiny, happy fantasias.

Utopia is not just an album about intimacy, it also expresses a degree of intimacy that goes beyond words--especially in the sense that her voice sounds so detailed here, and in the ways she works with Arca.

Björk’s Utopia is as much about attempting to reach paradise as it is setting up camp there. On her longest album to date, she has given herself the space to embrace the natural world as well as continuing to reckon with her past.

The result, by definition, breathes, which leads your ear initially to hear Björk’s voice as just another wind instrument; her lyrics don’t jump out the way they did in early stuff like “Hyperballad” or “Possibly Maybe.” But the words on “Utopia,” once they permeate your consciousness, are actually among her most intimate and affecting.

Utopia is where art, real life and deep experimentation intersects, and it’s utterly compelling.

Traditionalists might still wonder where all the nice steady beats have gone, why so little music here is anchored. The dominant message, though, is of limitlessness, of hope and, on Future Forever, of “a matriarchal dome” with “musical scaffolding”.

Both musically and lyrically, Utopia is extraordinarily gripping and majestically consistent in its intent to shake and uplift. If there is one aspect that runs the risk of breaking the spell it is its duration.

Utopia is like walking through a vast tropical greenhouse, full of sunlight, oxygen and the twittering of birds. [Jan 2018, p.108]

Utilising ideas of breath, space and breeze to thrilling effect, this is Björk at her most reflective and inquisitive. There are no clear cut 'hits' as such, and the album clearly begs to be enjoyed as a whole entity rather than have its innards plucked and picked at. However, if given your full attention, it will transport you to paradise.

Utopia really delivers on the transcendent promise of its title with the closing "Future Forever." [Jan 2018, p.12]

Utopia does function as a companion piece to Vulnicura, if only because it doesn’t require much effort to separate them as contrary forces.

The bit of dead weight here [the album's excessive duration] is especially frustrating, since Björk seems to have reconjured the elements that made her music so exceptional, and consistently enough that one can imagine a shorter, more curated iteration of Utopia that could stand with her very best albums.

Utopia, for all its new tricks and ideas, still sounds very much like a Björk record, meaning it will neither disappoint her dedicated base nor catch the casually interested much off guard. Still, if you're hungry for it, there's plenty here on which to chew.

There are times, however, when the mix doesn’t quite lend Björk’s message enough power. ... For the most part, Utopia sounds like an album where she’s followed her own advice. It demonstrates how the Icelandic alt-pop legend has pushed past her own emotional turmoil, taking yet another step in her ever-evolving saga, one that sets a path for future endeavours.

Simultaneously beautiful and befuddling, dazzling and irritating, Utopia has something of Stravinsky or Stockhausen about it. On some level, it may be a work of brilliance, but I suspect it is too far adrift from the rest of pop culture to appeal to anyone but a Björk devotee.

It doesn’t sound like anything else, it’s audibly the work of an artist mapping out their own fresh musical territory. But occasionally, it also feels like the work of an artist with their eyes so firmly fixed forward they’ve blocked out their audience: an emotional journey you watch, intrigued, from a distance, rather than feel or participate in.

Utopia feels like a diversion, not a destination. A nice place to visit--beautiful, even--but you wouldn't want to live there. [Jan 2018, p.89]