There are few people around who can always be relied on to create art in its highest form. Simply put, Bjork is one of those folks. The Icelandic pixie fronted college-radio darlings the Sugarcubes in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. In the wake of the group’s demise she embarked on a successful solo career, producing three excellent records drenched in dance culture and sonic experimentation (1993’s Debut, 1995’s Post, and 1997’s Homogenic). Her starring role in last year’s powerful film Dancer in the Dark (and the excellent soundtrack that accompanied it) placed her directly in the spotlight, peaking with her wonderfully strange, swan-laden performance at the Academy Awards.
Vespertine is her newest and most accomplished work to date. The ethereal grooves of her earlier records have morphed into many incarnations throughout her career; on Vespertine the production and arrangements are simpler, more lyric-focused. Now more than ever, the centerpiece of it all is Bjork’s unbelievable voice. The range and dyamics of it are truly extraordinary: it whispers painful lullabies, and soars majestically over the instrumentation, the note twisting and bellowing, on the verge of snapping in two. There has never been anything like it in music, period.
Not to say that the musicianship or production techniques are lacking in any way. The music stays true to the direction she’s been going all along, flushed with fluttering beats and loops that are constructed from an unending supply of eerie, distorted noises, the origins of which are impossible to trace. Harps and string sections flesh out the songs; choirs provide beautiful, spooky harmonies.
Bjork is credited with “music box arrangement” on a few songs; it is the focus of the instrumental “Frosti,” and the result is music that has a childlike ghostliness to it. There is great beauty in the sadness of its sound.
The focus of Vespertine is seemingly straightforward: love and everything that surrounds it. From the raw honesty of the coda to the song “Pagan Poetry” (“I love him” is repeated several times, with no music to accompany it) to the rhetorical question in “Sun In My Mouth” (“Will I complete/the mystery of my flesh?”), Bjork is discussing her most personal feelings with very little self-editing.
This outpouring of emotion is just as celebratory as it is confessional, evident in the amazing “Cocoon.” The song does not attempt to veil its intent for one second, the backing sounds reserved and stripped down, the landscape of the song filled with Bjork’s words: “He slides inside/half awake half asleep/We faint back into sleephood/When I wake up the second time in his arms/Gorgeousness/He’s still inside me.”
With Vespertine, Bjork has made an album that is her most organic and passionate yet. Fueled by emotion and dripping with sexuality, it is a major achievement in the career of one of the most immensely talented artists around.
Appeared in Issue One, 2003, of Traffic East.