While her frocks might still amuse the tabloids now and then, Björk has spent the last few years retreating from the spotlight. Her last two albums, Vespertine and Medulla, were intimate things, straying into avant-garde territory. They were often lovely, but not exactly chart-bothering.

Volta, however, is an exuberant charge in the general direction of the mainstream. This is still enjoyably strange music — Timbaland co-produces three tracks, but the twitching martial beats that he provides for songs such as Earth Intruders and Innocence would probably terrify his regular clients such as Justin Timberlake and Nelly Furtado.

Elsewhere, Björk conducts an orchestra of ships’ horns, drags Malian kora masters and Congolese scrap metal-bashers on to a global stage, and flits from solipsistic balladry to punishing techno with the joie de vivre that first made her a star. Only a couple of duets with the Mercury award-winner Antony Hegarty disappoint, the guest’s vocal tics congealing into a dolorous monotone in the company of his restlessly inventive host.

(One Little Indian)

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