In Gustav Holst’s Planets, near the end of “Neptune, the Mystic” a dissonantly angelic choir provides an unsettling backdrop to which the music fades out. Björk plunges into similar mystical places, her waif-like wisp of a voice traveling between whispering valleys and crisp peaks, flanked on all sides by otherworldly choirs, ambient instrumentation, music boxes, strings, harps, drum loops, and samples.

Having long stitched her unequivocal timbre to musical quilts with patches of electronica, trip-hop, and art-rock, Björk has sewn a new sail for this introspective journey. The music is stripped to bare, but concordant elements, usually successfully, but sometimes disappointingly bland. Warranting a push of the skip-button, a few songs end without having gone anywhere. For instance, “Cocoon,” while very personal, is more or less a four-minute gap between the majestic “Hidden Place” and “It’s Not Up to You.” On a stronger note, Viking odes like “Pagan Poetry” and “Aurora” employ celestially plucked harps, and Björk’s often cryptic lyrical homage to her native Icelandic folklore. The simplicity of “An Echo, a Stain” and “Unison” drips like sweet syrup to remedy the less flavorful songs. One might wish that the entire album had flown at this level of musicianship. Never one to dance to a conventional drumbeat, perhaps this nondescript leaning was a battle of wills for Björk to prove that she will do what she wants.