Volta by Bjork (CD, May-2007, Atlantic USA)

Bjork is back! Wearing what looks like a giant glass Christmas ornament with big blue feet. Whichever side of Bjork you love -- the bubblegum, funtime dance pop, or her recent albums of challenging, tormented, dreamy vocal experiments -- it's difficult to resist her signature elfin wail, a voice that sometimes seems to channel all of humanity's 21st century pain and hope. On her newest, Volta, she gives you the best of both sides of her split personality. About half the tracks hit your sweet tooth, especially the half featuring stomping dance beats by Timbaland and urgent pop choruses. But she also gives you plenty for your mind and your ghostly soul, with lots of strange, haunting ballads and experiments featuring an Icelandic horn ensemble, kora virtuoso Toumani Diabate, and lo-fi Congolese percussion troupe Konono No. 1. Her amazing duet with Antony (of the Johnsons), "The Dull Flame of Desire" is an entrancing highlight, as is the manic pounding of "Declare Independence". As always, her lyrics are raw howls of conscience, railing against the failures modern society, and declaring over and over again, independence. Volta will take you on a journey of the spirit, with a detour to the dancefloor along the way.

would love to love this album more. It does so much. Too much, really. Icelandic string sections, Antony, Chinese pipa, Timbaland for Thor's sake. I admire the ambition, but bloody hell! Everything all the time is for insecure overachivers like Mahler, not for geniuses like Bjork. In several sets I have trouble finding the music under all the big beats, the layered sounds, the triple-parking of ideas behind ideas behind ideas. I find myself wanting a little space. The music can't breath, and this is a real shame, because under all the STUFF are some melodies, structures, and vocal balletics worthy of Vespertine and Post. I wish they could escape their layer of fat. And, really, I must ask, why Timbaland? I can see the initial appeal of the idea, what with all the possibly compatible love of noises and stacked orchestration, but he's much too bossy and muscular to match up with the greatest and subtlest vocal instrument in music today. I hope Bjork's next album has her singing with the most minimal backup. And I hope Antony is back for more angelic crooning

There are some really solid songs like tribal, electro "Earth Intruders" and the straight up electronic soundstorm of some of the other tracks. Let's face it, some of the tracks are just downright boring. I love Bjorks music and have great respect for her as an artist. I have pretty much all of her other full length albums besides Drawing Restraint and this is by far my least favorite album....

Bjork returns to her iconic, innovative and rhythmic roots with Volta. Featuring her own infamous beats and collaborations with Timbaland, Antony Hegarty, Brian Chippendale and an all-female Icelandic brass section, the end result is an explosion of beats and an amalgamtion of sound and visuals that give Volta a life of its own, like the world hasn't seen from Bjork in years.
The digipack is beautiful and I love Bjork.

Björk is my favorite singer. I wanted to buy this cd and I was looking for it, but I found in here with an excellent price. So I decided to buy it.

Well, this is not one of Bjork's best cd's but it has some decent tracks. Pretty mellow and the extra vocalist used on some tracks is really good. I still rate it as "good" but I enjoy her older stuff more.