Utopia
| Bj
Utopia
Utopia is the ninth studio album by Icelandic singer-musician Bj rk. It was primarily produced by Bj rk and Venezuelan electronic record producer Arca, and released on 24 November 2017 through One Little Indian Records. -Wikipedia
Critic Reviews
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Pitchfork
Filled with flute and birdsong, Björk’s 10th album is deeply personal, a discovery of googly-eyed romance, a rebuke of violent men, and a generous offering of love song after love song.
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Consequence of Sound
The Icelandic singer returns with a thriving sound world rich in nuance and detail.
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The Guardian
A lush, airy, fresh start.
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Rolling Stone
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.
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SPIN
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.
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Resident Advisor
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.
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NME
‘Utopia’ is where art, real life and deep experimentation intersects, and it’s utterly compelling.
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Drowned in Sound
Both musically and lyrically, Utopia is extraordinarily gripping and majestically consistent in its intent to shake and uplift.
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Slant Magazine
Why Utopia ultimately feels more accomplished and rewarding than Vulnicura is because its densest, most challenging music exists as a counterpoint to ebullient songs like “Courtship,” with its somersaulting melody and baroque instrumentation, and “Saint,” a gorgeous pastoral hymn featuring some of Björk’s finest vocal work and orchestral arrangements.
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The Line of Best Fit
Björk’s Utopia is as much about attempting to reach paradise as it is setting up camp there.
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Stereogum
Utopia isn’t easily defined by one particular theme, it is best described as an awakening.
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Telegraph
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.
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The Daily UW
At so many points in “Utopia,” Björk runs the risk of slipping into saccharine, overly-sentimental crooning. It’s the strength of her musical skill, and the constant admission of nervousness and romantic anxiety throughout that keeps it a grounded and lovely experience.
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Los Angeles Times
Listen to the album three or four times and you might wonder, even the fourth time, if you've ever heard these songs before. Keep listening, though — keep putting in the effort of your attention — and "Utopia" slowly reveals itself.
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The Atlantic
Her brain, the song suggests, functions as a computer program that constantly evaluates passersby to see if they resemble her beloved, whether in height, facial hair, or accent.
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Golden Plec
Earthy and ethereal, ‘Utopia’ invites even the most ambivalent Björk listener to take a bite of the apple. ‘
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Soundblab
Unquestionably, there is plenty of artistic merit on offer, but as a whole, Utopia remains a somewhat inaccessible effort. 3/5
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Loud and Quiet
As it is, though, ‘Utopia’ remains, in its flawed honesty, floridity and explorative nature, as good an expression of late-period, high-concept Björk as one could hope for.
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Pop Matters
Björk's familiar voice and uncanny knack for creating dazzling, unique worlds can be a welcome tonic for our ills.
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XS Noize
Utopia is once again evidence of her utterly brilliant creativity. Utopia is not for the timid unadventurous listener. It is challenging and unlike anything else on offer but that is what makes it such a rewarding experience to encounter.
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Cryptic Rock
If a film could be recorded into music and released as purely audio, Utopia would be a fitting example of such.
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Irish Examiner
— an extraordinary turnabout from an artist who, after years of tumult, has discovered beauty contains its own truths.
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POST-TRASH
Though some of the diction might feel crass and maybe is meant to be so, it only serves to create the type of visceral reaction Björk wants from her audience on this record.
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The Fader
On her ninth album, the Icelandic artist weaves a matriarchal tapestry.
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Music OMH
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.
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Classic Pop Mag
Expanding horizons is what she does.
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The Oxford Student
Regardless of my disappointment at this album, I’m excited to see what she comes up with next.
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The Spill Magazine
Utopia is a long winding road of dreamy elegance and passion from an artist who has created her own private world in reaction to the one she exists in.
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Sputnik Music
There is no song in Utopia that is inherently bad, some are even fantastic, but the sum of all their flaws and, most fatally, their bloatedness ruins what could have potentially been one of Björk’s most captivating records.
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The Current
Yes, she's different, difficult and wonderfully divisive and thank goddess for that.
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The Fire Note
While highly recommended, Björk’s tenth album is still a challenging listen.
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The Rockhaq Community
Björk attempts to break free from the emotional shackles of 2015’s Vulnicura and in the process, creates an album of immense beauty and depth that rivals some of her best albums.
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Daily Bruin
While “Utopia” certainly expands upon Björk’s historically strange and avant-garde sound, at the end of the day, it’s clear that she is sticking to the formula that’s worked for her throughout her decades-long career: utter weirdness.
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Louder Than War
Björk’s tenth studio album sees her stepping out from the darkness of 2015’s heartbreak masterpiece Vulnicura and into a more positive world of her own creation.
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A.V. Club Music
As with most Björk records, Utopia is a lot to take in, and we’ll be absorbing it for a long time. 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.
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The Quietus
The new album from Björk is the light and pleasure to Vulnicura’s darkness and pain, but there’s much more to it than that.
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VICE
Vulnicura's follow-up is this week's Utopia, an album that musically reflects the vibrancy of its artwork and the escapism dictated by its title.
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Crack Magazine
Utopia is another triumph. As a spectral choir of Björks breathily combine on miraculous final track Future Forever, ruminating on herself as lover and mother, it leaves an elegiac yet buoyant echo; lamenting a past self and celebrating the new with a potent message of hope over fear. Perhaps a belief in perfection is naivety, and the search for Utopia is a fool’s errand.
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Soul Feeder
Utopia doesn’t move much past its status as a sequel and doesn’t really try to.
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The Skinny
Utopia is a hopeful and wondrous ninth record from the legendary Icelandic artist.
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Under the Radar Mag
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.
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All Music
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.
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NZ Herald
Utopia will be many people's idea of hell, but if you choose to follow Bjork along the woody path, you're in for a fascinating and scenic musical journey.
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Albumism
For long-time fans of Björk and music nerds who need some reason to believe, with a preposterous degree of positivity regarding the human condition, despite Donald Trump’s emboldening of AmeriKKKa, or Harvey Weinstein and Lars von Trier’s treatment of women in Hollywood, Utopia is a world you want to live in.
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Fact Mag
Björk returns at last to faith that, while individual instances might be fragile, and can fail, fade or disappoint, the principle of love and openness is eternal and everywhere. Utopia begins within; now it’s over to us.
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DIY Mag
While there’s nearly always a sense of beauty embedded within ‘Utopia’ though, there’s also a feeling of harshness.
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VultureHound
At over an hour the album feels a little over stuffed with ideas, and towards the middle loses steam, but only for a moment. When Björk focuses on achieving this utopia in her mind the album soars.
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Digital Journal
Overall, Bjork possesses a crystalline voice that is simply too good to be mortal. Her new album Utopia is sheer bliss, from start to finish, as she takes her fans and listeners on a musical journey.
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KLSU
Björk has done it again. In her captivating ninth studio album, "Utopia," the Icelandic singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and all-around powerhouse of a woman explores themes of nature, love, loss, and recovery.
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Riff Magazine
Björk’s glimpse into Utopia swarms the senses with yet another masterpiece.
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Music Connection
Björk unleashes a remarkable effort with her latest recording.
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PressPLAY OK
The themes here are plainer than ever, both in sonics and thematics.
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Csindy
The orchestrations and found sounds work best in longer tracks like “body memory,” and her mystical meanderings become explicit and immediate in the song “tabula rasa,” which could have been her response to the #MeToo movement.
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Commmedia
Although Utopia is a lengthy album, it would be doing a disservice to oneself to skip through tracks as every minute spent listening is completely worth it. Each track has vaguely similar qualities that make this a coherent and digestible record.
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Treble Zine
Utopia is most arresting in songs like “Body Memory,” which at once captures Bjork’s pleasures and pains. It is in these sonnets, where contradictory feelings rise together, that pioneering performer like this reminds her most loyal supporters why they came, and why they’ve stayed.
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Boston Globe
“Utopia” is both resolutely avant-garde and absolutely beautiful, a combination those who associate experimental music with dissonance and ugliness will find utterly paradoxical.
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Financial Times
Utopia's meandering songs are well suited to Björk's distinctive vocals.
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The Times
Following on from the rainy day of Vulnicura, her beautifully bleak, deeply felt 2015 outpouring of grief about the end of her relationship with the artist Matthew Barney, Utopia is the sunshine after the storm.
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Northern Transmissions
Björk’s confidence and theatricality are in full form here, and the majority of Utopia’s experiments succeed. It’s encouraging that, nine albums in, Björk still has so much to say, and the vision and talent to say it so well.
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K-UTE Radio
As a whole, Utopia is not her most compelling or innovative album, but it’s another deft demonstration of her ability to communicate the topic of love in ways most artists can only dream of.
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The Stingray Blog
Björk Guðmundsdóttir is: warmth, light, darkness, intensity, beauty, purity, boldness, depth, hope, love, hyper ballads, technicolor, catharsis, and every single other word in the dictionary.
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Brooklyn Vegan
The flute parts often sound like bright, sunny mornings, making Utopia both figuratively and literally a new beginning for Bjork. When those sounds clash with some of the harder-edged sounds, as they do on the aforementioned “Courtship,” it makes for some of the most exciting music of Bjork’s late-period career.
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Spectrum Culture
That Björk manages to juggle concrete observations on romance, resonant introspection on deeper notions of commitment to lovers and loved ones, and sketch a vision of utopia as place and mindset is a testament to her songwriting genius, which is as on display here as it’s ever been.
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S.F. Chronicle
After all these years, she’s still capable of making something as mundane as love feel cosmic.
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Entertainment Weekly
Björk's Utopia is a fantastical sensory experience.
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Record Collector Magazine
Only one song, the ecstatic, pulsating techno of Sue Me, is likely to work on the dancefloor. Yet the errant, raucous confluence of sounds and styles has a homogeneity that works to create a beguiling, and ultimately hugely rewarding whole. 5/5
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Popfection
Overall, Björk really delivered once again. This record is such a breath of fresh air, and showed once again the legend Björk is in music.
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Audioxide
With so much heart and so much to love, I wish I could sing the praises of Utopia, but ultimately I’d need to ignore a healthy portion of the tracklist in order to do so.
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Richer Sounds Blog
Utopia is an emotional, levitating journey into the soul of one of our generation’s most gifted artists.
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The Minnesota Daily
The lackluster effect of “Utopia” doesn’t come from the fact that the music is weird. Björk’s been weird since the start. But this album doesn’t do anything new. Listeners are better off returning to her early stuff for thrills.
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Luxury Activist
There is a positive feeling behind this album. Nevertheless we are missing Björk sharpness.
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Bust
Utopia is a refreshingly blissful, hopeful album. Even the dark and suspenseful centerpiece, the epic “Body Memory,” ends on a triumphant note. Only Björk could have created an album that feels so ancient and futuristic at the same time.
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Vulture
You can experience Utopia as a vast expanse of intriguing flute, drum, and vocal textures; get lost envisioning the mythical vistas they evoke when stacked on top of each other; or follow Björk on her path to lasting peace. Each approach offers new rewards.
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Louder
It floats through shifting electronic soundscapes, drones, warped beats and treated samples, blending harps, synths and birdsong until you feel as if the ground beneath you is melting. Whether you’ll feel emotionally moved – rather than just bewildered – is another matter.
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The Independent
there’s a complete failure of melodic potency throughout, a shortcoming exacerbated by the way that the beats, flutes, and voices have only the most marginal, possibly accidental, relationship with each other. Achingly dull, and self-regardingly solipsistic.
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Music Feeds
Indeed, for Björk, Utopia extols progression – as she closes with the feminist manifesto ‘Future Forever’.
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The Berklee Groove
Björk has really mastered her craft on this album. The songs can be exceptionally long and some may not enjoy that there are instrumentals in the middle of it, but,it is a great holiday gift for the classical friend in your life
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Irish Times
Björk seems to suggest that utopia is not something handed to you; it is considered and hard-fought-for. It turns on the concept and experience of loss, as so much great art does, while reaching for something “future forever”.
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Arena
Bjork's tenth album is a sweet exploration of love, sex, and friendship.
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The Chronicle
Bjork's 'Utopia' doesn't quite live up to its title.
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Exclaim!
Utopia feels like both a journey and a collection of statements that define and affirm who Björk is, as heard on "Future Forever": "Your past is a loop / turn it off […] See this possible future and be in it." Coming from Björk that hope shines particularly brightly.
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Tiny Mix Tapes
Some releases are so incredible we just can’t help but exclaim EUREKA!
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The Musical Hype
Ever-intriguing, Icelandic singer-songwriter Björk returns with an exceptional new album, ‘Utopia,’ encompassing life, love, and the gift of music.
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High Clouds
For better or worse, there’s no other living artist who could have made an album like this one. It’s Björk at her most inaccessible ever, breaking with her past self to create an art piece equally fascinating and dull, futuristic and bucolic, bitter and yet weirdly joyful.
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The New Yorker
There’s a kind of luxury to the songs on “Utopia,” in their capacity to be so precious and so particular about language and sound. Is it a form of retreat, or is it magic?
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The 405
Björk returns with the epic, exploratory emotions of Utopia. She is at once more hopeful and pensive, reaching into every possible arena.
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The Muse
Utopia is mesmerizing and infuriating, a transmission from a cloistered land from someone who used to visit ours but now demands that we come to her. Too rarely, in my experience, is the trip worth it anymore.
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OUTLOUD Multimedia
Accompanied by four music videos, Bjork paints the world with fresh flirtations, raw feminine energy, and maybe even the blueprint for true Utopia.
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God Is In The T.V.
Björk’s lyrics compliment the world-transforming music well.
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Musik Express
Abstract sounds and hot feelings: The great avant-gardist from the north warms her futuristic art pop to the magical renewal of love.
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Daily Emerald
Bjork finds bliss in other-wordly 'Utopia'.
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The Student Playlist
While Utopia does feel like something of a sequel to Vulnicura, it very much inhabits its own world, and sees Björk penning some of her most personal and spellbinding songs to date.
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Glide Magazine
Utopia works best as a musical movement; perhaps more than any of her records, it feels like a song cycle and a single piece.
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SunGenre
Utopia is a stunning, puzzling piece of art which put quite simply, is unlike anything else you’ll hear this year.
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Soundbath
Björk has given us a gift, one that perhaps not all are ready to receive. It’s a world of escape, of light and air and women, but it’s also a roadmap.
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The Charlatan
Even if her next album doesn’t ascend to the same dizzying heights, we’ll always have this one, eminently warm moment in her music.
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The Daily Nebraskan
“Utopia” at its fullest is a love album, a peering into the delicate intimacies of Björk’s life and musical expression. It is truly satisfying experience for Björk fans and anyone planning on listening to the album in full.
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Renowned for Sound
While Utopia is certainly a flawed release, Björk has executed it with such confidence that it is difficult not to become at least a little enthralled by the album’s overall effect and its place in her oeuvre.
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Comic Crusaders
After exploring life, almost at the molecular and cellular level on the last two studio releases Vulnicura and Biophilia, Björk has broadened her scope on Utopia to speak to the world.
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Cult MTL
The concepts are refreshing, but more production time could’ve helped. That being said, perhaps the album needs more listens and processing time than her previous work — only time will tell.
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Hyponik
For the most part though, Utopia is a riveting listen; the sound of an artist drawing deft parallels between personal difficulties and contemporary concerns.
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The Georgetown Voice
Bjork’s newest album may find avid fans among the admirers of experimental music; however, it likely will not appeal to the casual listener. One cannot deny Bjork’s originality as a creator, which Utopia truly showcases. Nevertheless, her experimental liberties make listening to her album a grueling experience.
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Anhedonic Headphones
A long, sprawling, challenging listen, I’m neither better, nor worse, for having listened, and for me, it was the kind of thing that I’m more than likely not going to remember after I hit ‘publish’ on this review, and remove the album from my iTunes library.
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The Daily Free Press
Björk definitely wins with the uniqueness of her sound. And lyrically, the album bears a philosophical importance.
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Immortal Reviews
Björk's music is best described as ethereal, capturing the sound of the feeling between reality and our dreams. With that in mind, Björk's Utopia will take you to a distant world like she never has before.
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SLUG Magazine
Utopia finds Bjork exploring a delicate balance between gorgeous art songs and restlessly experimental sound explorations. She crafted a whole that defies categorization and outdoes any number of one-dimensional electronic albums, reaffirming the endless bounds of her creativity and musicianship.
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Burn FM
Björks 10th album is her longest to date at 72 minutes, but it also stands as one of her most revealing and beautiful.
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The National
The Icelandic experimenter introduces a new humanity into her increasingly abstract work.
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Spectrum Pulse
ous, Bjork is one hell of a performer and easily the best composer and producer to keep Arca in line, and there are some truly stunning moments
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ACRN
Björk’s music can’t sustain the thematic depth these kinds of interactions demand.
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NOW Toronto
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.
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Daily Trojan
Bjork continues to defy boundaries with 'Utopia'.
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Exciting Stuff
Utopia means a perfect place, and maybe this album is where Björk is right now.
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Steve Savage
Overall, this is a superb album. It will definitely not appeal to everyone, however, and those who are willing to try and experience it should do so with an extremely open mind.
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STACK
If ‘utopia’ is an ideal state of being, then perhaps we could say all of Björk’s albums exist there.
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Social WIIN
If Vulnicura (her 2015 album) watched volcanic ash blanketing the life of Björk, Utopia paints brand-new life rising from the fertile ground.
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mxwdn
Utopia brings together 14 “love songs” that showcase just how crazy love can make us, but how it can also be the best thing to happen to someone.
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Herald Sun
Björk has found her happy place, post-split.
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The Daily Texan
There’s no denying Bjork is Iceland’s undisputed queen of music. She’s difficult to define but frequently comforting and familiar, shining like an incandescent light bulb in the back of a dark room. Unfortunately, Utopia struggles to continue with Bjork’s long-standing success.
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