Bjork

Sometimes, Bjork can't help proving that she is one the most over-rated songwriters of the 1990s, and she manages the task wonderfully on Selmasongs (Elektra, 2000). Cvalda and I've Seen It All are probably the least pretentious tracks here, and it is no surprise that they rank also among the most sincere. Elsewhere, orchestral arrangements and synthetic rhythms (both designed and performed by other musicians) reduce her voice to a mere marketing device for what is, ultimately, passionate easy listening set to dance beats, "show tunes" in the most conservative Broadway tradition.

The first impression with Bjork's music is always of something terribly trivial, obnoxious and, ultimately, boring. Vespertine (Elektra, 2001) is no exception. The "modern" rhythms are a masquerade. The tenuous arrangements are hardly innovative. Bjork is a plastic fantastic vocalist, who can turn pretty much any sequence of notes into a song and add a magical, oneiric feeling to whatever plays around her, but Hidden Place is merely easy listening with echoes of 1960s' film music in the ethereal choir.
The bubbling, sparkling, delicate tapestry of It's Not up To You (a veritable jungle of sound effects) eventually releases a string-driven aria that belongs to Broadway shows. The coda, again, brings in the female choir, a recurring trick throughout the album (oddly reminiscent of the Rolling Stones' You Can't Always Get What You Want). A similar pattern occurs in An Echo A Stain.
The subdued, disjointed, timidly noisy electronics (courtesy of Matmos) perfectly complement Bjork's wandering and overdubbed vocals in Undo, ranking as the second most important trick of the album, soon joined by the ever more cosmic choir. By the fifth track you are beginning to sense that there is very little of substance, just those two tricks and Bjork's voice. Bjork's quasi-operatic talent does shine in Aurora, that sounds like the soundtrack to a happily lost Alice In Wonderland. A childish atmosphere populates the closing Unison as well.
Too mellow to display any significant emotion, the album lives of romantic and surreal soundscapes, broadly reminiscent of film and show tunes.
She is not a genius of composition, but her paradisiac, fairy-queen crooning has indeed created something new the way Hendrix's guitar invented something new. She doesn't own the arrangements, and often seems indifferent to them (Heirloom is simply Bjork's vocals on top of Console's instrumental Crabcraft), but the album's complexity is the ideal setting for her art, whatever her art is.

Just like the Beatles before her, Bjork has made trivial pop music enhanced with studio wizardry. It's the studio wizardry, not the music, that people buy. And the tv-friendly image, of course. Anybody who thinks Bjork is a genius should try to listen at least to Solex. Let your ears, not publicity, judge.

Family Tree (Elektra, 2002) is a six-CD box-set that collects rare and previously unreleased material. Greatest Hits (Elektra, 2002) is a career retrospective.

If an unknown musician makes a wildly experimental album, few will notice. But if a pop star makes a mildly experimental album, critics will go berserk writing how daring and adventurous she is. Medulla (Elektra, 2004) is ostensibly a vocal album with electronic and digital production work, but no traditional instruments at all; and ostensibly inspired by the September 11 terrorist attacks on New York (where she now lives). The album is an exhibition of her knowledge of the state of the art in recording technology and her good taste in picking collaborators (Mike Patton, Robert Wyatt, Matmos, Rahzel of the Roots). That's the whole "experimental" concept. Beyond this, the album contains the radio-friendly Who Is It and Oceania, the hip-hop of Triumph of the Heart, the mildly entertaining Pleasure Is All Mine and Submarine, the pulsing production tour de force of Where is the Line and the laid-back, almost angelic, Desired Constellation. This part of the "experiment" is certainly recommended as background music for fireplace evenings. But it bears the same relationship to experimental art that Christmas wallpaper bears to impressionist painting.
This is not to say that the album is a bore. There are career highlights: the harrowing a-cappella kammerspiels of Show Me Forgiveness and Vokuro and the chilling Freudian soundscapes of Oll Birtan and Ancestors. This is an album of "vocal atmospherics", and that would be enough to make it an interesting piece of work, although a far cry from the truly experimental "atmospheric vocalists" of our time (Diamanda Galas docet).
Just do not exaggerate her merits. During the 1990s, countless black soul stars have made albums that relied entirely on electronic production instead of traditional instruments. In a veiled case of "blackxploitation", Bjork has adopted that idea and bent it to the intellectual aesthetic ideals of the European culture. Like all pop stars, she pretends to straddle the line between experimentation and commercial sell-out, when in fact she is simply advertising her "product" over and over again, the ultimate commercial trick. Just like Madonna at her (commercial) best. It is an insult to all the experimental musicians in the world to claim that there is even a bit of experimentation in this album.
The change in mood is, all in all, even more interesting than the music: gone is the naive and/or erotic tone of her former self, and Bjork is suddenly a scared human being adrift in the wild river of history.

Army Of Me (One Little Indian, 2005) collects remixes and covers of the namesake song. It would have been the biggest swindle of her career if it had not been a charity album (all profits go to UNICEF).

Bjork debuted as a composer of soundtracks in Matthew Barney's film Drawing Restraint 9 (One Little Indian, 2005). Her eleven vignettes, inspired by Japan's noh theater, were performed by an international cast of musicians including Zeena Parkins, Will Oldham, Akira Rabelais, Mayumi Miyata, She is definitely a better vocalist than musician.

Bjork entered a new stage of life with Volta (Atlantic, 2006). Having refined the form of the moody meditative ballad underpinned by tortured rhythms, she confronted domestic and political themes in a more masculine manner (almost anthemic in Declare Independence). Innocence and especially Earth Intruders stand out as manuals of how to blend ethnic accents, hip-hop beats, electronic arrangements and pop crooning. Nonetheless she manages to waste the contributions of such virtuosi as Mali's kora player Toumani Diabate and Chinese pipa player Min Xiao-Fen. The horns, as it often the case with Bjork, are the most effective counterpart to the voice, so that Wanderlust and the seven-minute Dull Flame of Desire (a duet with Antony Hegarty) become the emotional centerpieces of the set. And if the substance is not always self-evident, Pneumonia (for voice and French horns only) displays Bjork's indisputable class as a performer.

Bjork's multimedia extravaganza Biophilia (2011), designed and implemented using high-tech devices, opted for a faint and slow approach, for spartan arrangements, for timid ethereal vocals and a meditative/contemplative mood. The opener, Moon, is actually one of the most vibrant pieces, despite its arrangement being limited to tinkling instruments and sporadic vocal counterpoint. Aging, the tone of her voice has sometimes come to resemble Nico's: the same austere, stately, otherworldly enunciation, the same cold-blooded heart surgery, the same evocation of ancestral values. Unfortunately, Bjork's passion for sophisticated arrangements places her in a different universe, the universe of cocktail lounges, as Thunderbolt shows. On the other hand, Cosmogony feels like an excerpt from a musical of the 1950s with Diana Ross' mellow crooning and a celestial choir, but the music is little more than bass lines and choral laments. The best moment of the piece (and perhaps of the album) comes at the end when the singers and the bass meld into a gently warped acid "om". The single Crystalline sounds like a deconstructed gospel call and response over an exotic caravan rhythm and syncopated drum machine (that towards the end blossoms into a full-fledge breakcore machine). Hollow is de facto a multi-part mini-suite: a staccato instrumental effect (another sonic highlight of the album), a dancing neoclassical orchestra, ugly glitchy electronica, and a rushed finale. The childish chant Virus feeds on a shower of toy instruments and found percussion. The last three songs are pure filler.
Despite the humble premises, this album ends up sounding pretentious like the previous ones. She just is fundamentally a cold calculating mind that has trouble expressing an emotion but is very skilled at wrapping that emotion with all sorts of theories and practices. Last but not least, her voice is still an acquired taste (never acquired by me).

Mount Wittenberg Orca (2010) was a collaboration with Dirty Projectors Bastards (2012) is a remix album.

Vulnicura (One Little Indian, 2015), co-produced with Arca (Alejandro Ghersi), was yet another break-up album, joining the long list that runs from Dylan's Blonde on Blonde to Nick Cave's The Boatman's Call via Joni Mitchell's Blue. Bjork's string orchestration is heavier and more sumptuous than ever, but even more important is Arca's translucent, disorienting, multi-layered percussion work. There is hardly a song on which Arca doesn't invent something completely new and unexpected (the exact opposite of Bjork's singing). There are hits and misses, though. The seven-minute chamber lied Stonemilker is actually ruined by the beats (and by the lyrics, if anyone listens to them). The six-minute Lionsong is more of the same except that the hyper-syncopated beats are a bit more interesting if not original. The ten-minute Black Lake is the opposite: the strings ruin the beatscape that is highly expressive in itself. The pauses and the surges of the rhythm tell the story better than words. The strings, instead, are a trivial and tedious distraction.
But then, forsaking the obnoxious orchestral arrangements, Arca and Bjork craft the atonal percussive fantasia History of Touches that, even if lasts only three minutes, is worth dozens of typical Bjork ballads. Even better is the eight-minute Family, the lone song produced by Haxan Cloak (Bobby Krlic) but co-composed with Arca, a veritable dramatic poem drenched in a claustrophobic atmosphere: the mood is set by hysterically vibrating strings, then a staccato viola evokes a schizoid mindset, then tidal waves of menacing droning strings induce a sense of panic, then a lake of rippling atonal chords induces a sense of helplessness. The savage pounding minimalism of Bjork's orchestration (a` la Michael Nyman) in the six-minute Notget sustains the tension. The eight-minute Atom Dance is another zenith of musical theater, a crippled Renaissance dance propelled by a five-note pizzicato figure that evolves slowly but steadily until it becomes the equivalent of a horror-movie soundtrack,and becomes a kammerspiel for her multi-tracked voice or for her voice dueling with a male echo over aquatic percussion. It ends very far from where it started, sounding like some sort of slave plantation song.
The album loses steam after these three tours de force. The six-minute chaotic theater of voices Mouth Mantra sounds forced and tired even if it ends in a terrifying wall of noise. Quicksand is equally an over the top production for what amounts to very little.
The weakest element is, yet again, Bjork's lyrics. The strongest element is, of course, Arca's visceral beats, worthy of a jazz improviser. In fact, this could be Arca's best album if it were credited to him. If credited to her, her best album in a decade. She has certainly improved as an arranger, although it would be easy to find dozens of humble arrangers who can do a better job.

The sprawling (72-minute long) Utopia (2017) was another collaboration with Arca, but his incendiary beats are very much tamed. Generally speaking, gone are the claustrophobia and the brutality. This is a much calmer and rational affair. Bjork has suddenly discovered the flute, an instrument that gets employed everywhere. Given the results, the move feels more childish than artistic. The result largely depends on how Arca's beats blend or collide with Bjork's semi-classical arrangements. Arisen My Senses is an utter bore until the tinging harp gets detonated by a burst of booming noise. Courtship has more Arca but his beats are not well integrated with the chaotic flutes and Bjork's vocals. On the other hand, the multi-tracked voice and synth bubbles are cheerfully integrated in Claimstaker, but it's one of the shortest songs. Her best melody is poured in the seven-minute lullaby Losss and Arca does not hesitate to drown it in one of his most devastating maelstroms. That's the one truly impressive collaboration on this album. The ten-minute Body Memory is the collage du jour: a background of metallic noise, a female choir and a male choir taking turns, and the lugubrious flute drones.
The songs that don't have a significant contribution from Arca don't fare well. The graceful and calm Blissing Me, decorated only with harp and xylophone, is quite a contrast compared with the previous album's cataclysms. Utopia sounds like merely a sketch for deconstructing a flute concerto by Bach. The single The Gate, whose video ranks as one of the most creative videos ever, has her voice conversing with a primordial flute in a relatively spare, gurgling ambience. The mediocrity of these songs is counterbalanced by Features Creatures, sung almost a-cappella over a wind of humming voices and an eerie coda of flute, electronics and ghostly voices.
Had she trimmed the songs and removed several duds, this would have been another brilliant collaboration with Arca. Her flute mania does not help establish her as a serious composer.

Fossora (One Little Independent, 2022), ostensibly an exploration of matriarchy, is in fact an exploration of a woman's inner life. As usual, the lyrics wouldn't be an attractor without the arrangements. Atopos is born out of the meeting between the hyper-syncopated beat crated by Indonesian duo Gabber Modus Operandi (dj Kasimyn and Ican Harem) and a Stravinsky-ian chamber septet (six clarinets and an oboe). The seven-minute Ancestress, delivered in the tone of a fairy tale, features a large string section, a backup vocalist and a percussionist (Iceland Symphony Orchestra's timpanist Soraya Nayyar). The way she sings in the dissonant and ghostly Victimhood against anemic phrases of the chamber septet feels psychedelic, "stoned". Twelve flutes decorate Allow and at one point create a paradisiac atmosphere in which the voice floats ecstatic. Fungal City matches the string section with the clarinet-oboe septet and with additional vocals by Serpentwithfeet, but the result is a sort of spastic neosoul. The most passionate moment (or at least the most yearning vocals) arrives perhaps in Freefall, like an aria from a Broadway musical, accompanied by a string quartet and contrabass. The most shocking transformation happens in Fossora, which opens like a folkish dance (with the chamber septet imitating a medieval band) but ends with a frenzied beat worthy of grindcore. But there are also the a-cappella hymn Sorrowful Soil (a collaboration with an Icelandic choir) and the closing elegy of Her Mother’s House (with the sole accompaniment of a backup vocalist and an English horn), perhaps the zenith of pathos. As usual, it's all a bit confused and blurred, but, indirectly, this is Bjork's deliberate method. The problem, as usual, is that, if it weren't for the arrangements, many songs would sound the same. She has invented a unique kind of melodic singing, free of the refrain/chorus/hook, which allows her great versatility in how to accommodate the verses, but it's a vocal style that has limited emotional value. One suspects that some of these songs would be more interesting as instrumentals, as chamber compositions with no vocals at all. After all, the lyrics are not exactly her forte. She shares a lot of traits with another auteur: Van Morrison. Like Van Morrison before her, she traded the exuberance of the club scene for intensely serious meditations. Whatever was naively eccentric in her early music became over the years a deliberate ideology, almost a personal self-diagnosis or self-therapy. Like Van Morrison before her, she turned her singing from a generational voice into a force of nature. Like Van Morrison before her, she turned from the simple framework of rock music to elaborate arrangements that evoke psychic spaces.