It makes the whole runtime feel like a show.
There’s that distance again - a desire by the author to be closer with their subject than they are. The clicky drum machines, with disjointed melodies, want to tell a more powerful story than they do. The song’s title itself places a strange sort of distance between Björk and her mother - rarely do people refer to their parents as their ancestors - something reflected again by the song. “Ancestress” is a seven minute long play that tells the story of Björk’s mother’s death and features vocals by Björk’s son, Sindri Eldon. Sonically it’s lacking too, with boring instrumentation and vocalization that does little to highlight Björk’s strengths. The content of “Sorrowful Soil” leaves it as the most underwhelming cut on “Fossora,” wrought with half-baked analysis of motherhood. Systematically repetitive beats mimic the organization of fungi and musculature, while reiterating both as synonyms of new beginnings from decomposition. “Mycella” and “Trolla-Gabba” (also featuring Kasimyn) both feature texturally contrasting wordless harmonic choruses over instrumental – audible renditions of the asexual growth of sporing fungi. Björk’s lyrics truthfully isolate one of the most conflicting aspects of being a parent in a household as “broken” as this tune’s rhythm. And that love is so transcendent that it needs to be prioritized over everything that occurred in the past. Sometimes, it doesn’t make sense how you can love that face all over again. In that child, the love that was once shared comes back to Björk with a similar face, but without all the ire. The hostility a broken heart endures / the velocity of that injury is returned to the world / with the same grin showing teeth.Ī lost relationship is eulogized in the face of a new beginning - its resulting child. The music is irreverent in its treatment of your expectations and notes never land where you expect. It’s telling Björk no, in comparison to lyrics that read as a digestion of emotions. The drum in “Ovule” goes “tsk tsk tsk” alongside ascendant, propulsive vocals. All of which is very apparent in the skeletal and robotic beat that drives the song, like a zombified Jane Fonda working you to death. Or, it is literally a muscle, something exercised tirelessly in the depths of a difficult relationship that only grows stronger as things digress.
Hope is the lifeform attachment reminding you that everything has value. If you contort your thoughts to match your perception of Björk’s, it nearly makes sense. More importantly, all you can make out is “hope is a mussel” or “hope is a muscle.” Whatever. In the context of a relationship, it erases the quirks that you once loved in the face of hardship, something echoed later in the album with “Freefall” - a soft and intimate ballad about an aging relationship that highlights the scope of Björk’s vocal range. Perfectionism is always an overcompensation, erasing the flawed aspects of life that distinguish it from artificial reality. The clarinets echo in the background as though they were narrating an evil “Sesame Street” rhyme, a reminder that the plant reaching closest towards the sun has the darkest shadows under its petals. If my plant doesn’t reach towards you / There’s internal erosion towards all / Pursuing the light too hard is a form of hiding. The opening track, featuring Kasimyn (the half of Indonesian electronic duo Gabber Modus Operandi that does not have sexual abuse allegations), begins with vocals that sound alternatingly closer and further away, as though they were traversing in time - a fleeting memory. In “Fossora,” Björk plays with the idea of fungi and gravity while molding her style with Gabber, a genre of hardcore techno originating in the Netherlands, to convey a sense of “landing,” like feet on the ground. Her latest album, “Fossora,” mostly continues this trend while exploring themes including separation, motherhood and the #MeToo movement. Since her time in the 1980s with the Sugarcubes, Björk has earned a name for herself through thoughtful lyrics, artful vocal interpretations and melodic abstractions. For better? The music, with huge thanks to her collaborators. Björk, born of the DIY punk scene, has released a doozy of a 10th studio album, which is analyzed here - for better and for worse - in its entirety.
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