Björk - Fossora

When I was a senior in high school one night, I couldn’t sleep so I decided to put on a movie called Dancer in the Dark. If you’re familiar with Björk or even the films of Lars Von Trier, you’ve heard about the absolute devastation that is Dancer in the Dark. Going into a movie like that without any expectations or knowledge, outside of the ‘laurel wreaths’ of some festival on the poster, at such a formative age is bound to send one into a spiral of sorts. In the midst of that spiral, I bought my first Björk album, Homogenic and soon my next Björk album and so on and so on. I was transfixed. Some years down the road, a little bit after Volta, I fell off. I dug into Biofilia briefly but aside from the electric ‘Crystaline’ I wasn’t as invested as I once was. Now, in 2022, Björk has released her 10th album, Fossora, and we find ourselves in a much different world that the one at the start of the millennium. I found myself wondering, maybe it was time to dip back into the unusual-yet-comforting world of Björk.

The opening track ‘Atopos’ crashes into view with its stomp of a dance beat and infectious clarinets chiming in breaking things up with Björk’s undeniable voice. It’s clear off the bat that if anyone ever thought the power behind her voice would have waned over the years, they were mistaken. She’s as confident and dexterous as she’s ever been vocally and as adventurous instrumentally as she was in her late 90’s/early 2000’s career. Lyrically, ‘Atopos’ is one of the more direct songs on an often mysterious album, with its calls for unity and hope.

Are these not just excuses to not connect?
Our differences are irrelevant
To insist on absolute justice at all times
It blocks connection

Our union is stronger, our union is stronger than us
Hope is a muscleThat allows us to connect
Hope is a muscle
Hope is a muscle
Hope is a muscle
Hope is a muscle
That allows us to connect

There are many tracks where the instrumentation lushly wraps and folds itself around the lead vocal march. ‘Ovule’ with its gentle horns and the lush orchestral landscape of ‘Ancestress’ are strong early showings of this, as is the windingly choral ‘Sorrowful Soil’ with its staggering staccato that gets more compelling and irresistible with each listen.

In a woman's lifetime
She gets four hundred eggs
But only two or three nests
Woven with a mother's life force (Woven with a mother's life force)
Emotional textile (Woven with a mother's life force, woven with a mother's life force)
Self-sacrificial (Woven with a mother's life force)
This is emotional textile
Self-sacrificial, self-sacrificial

Nihilism happеning cuts through this
Nihilism happening
You did well, you, you did your best
Wеll, you did your best (You did, you did it well)
You did, did, di-di-di-did well
You did, did, di-di-di-di-di-di well
You di-di-di-di-did well
You did well

Never one to do the same thing from track to track we also have moody standouts like ‘Victimhood’ with the foghorn like droning over a stagnant drip drop beat and ominous vocal performance. There are also the growing strings that eventually break loose into a plucky rainstorm in the gorgeous ‘Freefall’ and the gentle bass pulsing through the wind instruments of ‘Allow’ that lay a solid grounding between the more esoteric experimentations.

The warm, open wind on my skin
Primordial plant glistening
With moisture directed at me, erect
My hair fossilized with salt and crust

Allow, allow, allow
Allow you to grow

‘Allow’ also brings us to one of the several features on this album with Emilie Nicolas contributing on the chorus with a lovely backing performance. One of the other highlight features is both my favorite and most frustrated moments one the album with serpentwithfeet coming in the magical ‘Fungal City.’ I love the whimsical notes and the victorious chorus but wish that serpentwithfeet didn’t get as lost in the in the grandeur of it all. We also get Kasimyn on the electric title track ‘Fossora’ which breaks out like a thunderous boom of all the elements of the album that came before. The real starshine feature, however, goes to the heavenly album closer ‘Her Mother’s House’ with Björk’s own daughter, Ísadóra Bjarkardóttir Barney, flying in like a falling leaf on a damp forest floor. It’s a truly magical moment.

The space in your voice
Shows the scale of your compassion
The tone of your voice
Reveals the space you give others
The more I love you (The more you love me)
The stronger you become (The stronger I become)
The less you need me (And the less I need you)

There are so many moments of pure natural wonder and beauty in this album. As it winds and twists over its run time there are moments of birth, thunder and destruction, death and rebirth and even in its most mysterious moments I felt as if I was being taken through the life cycle of an alien ecosystem, but one that in its darkest moments, still offered comfort. For someone who once turned to Björk for a place of belonging in a world that no longer felt secure, with Fossora I welcome her back into my life, and maybe I can find that same comfort in a differently complicated new world.