‘Blissing’, as some kind of Cocoon-referencing portmanteau, may be supremely unlikely to catch on in common parlance; and incidentally, Björk’s Blissing Me – a second to come from her forthcoming Utopia full-length, following on from the ‘heartwarming canticle’ that is/ was The Gate – is nowhere near as catchy as, say, Army of Me. Of course, this isn’t some kind of complaint, mind; merely a remark on the direction in which this eternally remarkable artiste has since chosen to go, with the introspective, “visceral” tonalities of Vulincura instead dredged up once again. Yet whereas said release centred around the dissolution of she and Matthew Barney’s long-term rapport, Blissing Me conversely finds the Icelander “celebrating on a viral sea,” as she and an unspecified other – a fellow “music nerd” – bat MP3s back and forth, “falling in love to a song.” Comprising seven verses and not one solitary chorus, as a total listen, it’s as startling as unexpectedly falling in love all over again, and arrives replete with all the intrinsic personal uncertainties this brings with it. But if Björk should be ready and so too willing to “reserve [her] own intimacies/ Abandon ’em all in packages,” as its seventh and final verse begins, then by this point, some 254 seconds in, it has become more or less impossible to resist its tremendously intimate charms.
Utopia is available from November 24th via One Little Indian, while Björk plays All Points East on Sunday, 27th May, 2018.