“Moments of clarity are so rare, I better document this,” Björk sings, in “Stonemilker,” the first track of Vulnicura. Her intentions are clear from the beginning—this album is going to be a musical diary of sorts, or a personal confession.

Written after her separation from longtime partner Matthew Barney, Björk’s Vulnicura is a raw and emotional, with a sound that spans from deep, dark and electronic to soaring and celestial. Although some of Björk’s earlier works are abstract, Vulnicura is straight- forward and relatable to anyone who has experienced heartbreak—basically, anyone. Björk has broken down crying in interviews about the new album. She can’t speak about the album, she says, but the album speaks for itself. “I’m not trying to be difficult. It really is all in there,” Björk told The Atlantic.

What is there is a timeline of a relationship in decline—the album itself moves from pre- breakup to post-heartbreak, chronologically. The first three songs of Vulnicura describe Björk’s feelings as her relationship fell apart. In “Stonemilker,” Björk details the failings of communication: “I have emotional needs, I wish to synchronize our feelings.” Björk builds tension in “Lionsong” with complex harmonies and escalating violins as she describes her attempts to untangle her partner’s moods and find the ever-elusive clarity. She offers a messy kind of conclusion at the end of the song: “It’s a sign of maturity to be stuck in complexity. I demand clarity either way.”

In “History of Touches,” the last of the pre-breakup songs, Björk creates a sense of warped time with discordant, pulsing synth as she sings about compressing the timeline of a relationship into a single moment. In the album booklet, the first six songs are labeled according to the timeline of the breakup; “History of Touches” is “three months before.”

“Black Lake,” the centerpiece of the album, marks the transition from before to after Björk’s breakup. At ten minutes long, it ranges from accusatory to despairing to rebellious; at first, her heart is a “black lake” but then, she sings, “I am a glowing shiny rocket return- ing home.” The song will be featured in “an immersive music and film experience” in the Björk retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The exhibition, which will present a part biographical, part fictitious narrative on Björk’s artistic career, will run from March 8 to June 7. As with her album, MoMA crosses the bounds of music, life and art in order to showcase Björk’s work.