In all her time as Iceland’s unofficial mascot, Bjork has never fallen back on constancy – excluding, of course, a seldom-waning shock value and relentless career-spanning box sets – and her art is all the more fascinating for it. But considering the labored upkeep of elusive identity and bouts of remix frenzy, Bjork’s single-word-title LPs have consistently served as pillars of uniformity. Between 1993’s jazzed Debut and the human-voice stretches of 2004’s Medulla, she’s seen cozy introspection, theatrical rebellion, epic majesty and sparse, swanlike sweetness.
Seeing as Bjork now risks becoming the “”weird”” customer on Timbaland’s checklist – perhaps predicting a hip club phase – the preservation of her far-off enigma is endangered. Bjork stomps into Volta opener and first single “”Earth Intruders”” with the precise tribal march we could expect from a Timbaland collab, albeit with a battle cry disconcertingly yelpy enough to keep her ever-youthful glacier from melting into the mainstream. But the remaining nine tracks, thickly varied in tempo and approach, generally lack melody – perhaps more so than ever. Repetitive rage on “”Wanderlust”” could have stood a chance, if not for the two-minute foghorn and sounds-of-the-harbor intro.
Her wandering, wigged-out trill, set next to the mother-earth rumble of gender-bending Antony Hegarty on two chilling duets – the first of which riddles a “”Stairway to Heaven”” orchestra with kettle-drum pitter-patter – takes on a tired weird-aunt quirkiness, especially with typical Bjork pillow talk like “”I love your eyes my dear/ They’re splendid sparkling fire.”” She vacillates between barefoot-stomping politics (“”Declare Independence”” seems more directed at her daughter’s boy-threatened tree fort than any specific social target), harpoon-wielding techno armies, strangled, popping strings and a downright infantile wail. Volta pins Bjork in the most scatterbrained stage she’s ever revealed – a new consistent inconsistency in her designated medium of uniform consistence. Yes, you’re supposed to be confused.
