Bjork, Vespertine
Bjork is one odd woman. I mean, a lot of people think they’re odd, and it’s easy to look at somebody like, say, Christopher Walken and say “Gee, that is one odd fella”. But Bjork is really, really exceptionally weird, and naturally she shows it by making really, really weird music.
I read something somewhere, I don’t know if it was in a story or a poem or it may have been in somebody else’s review for this album, but it was about how something was real in the way that only the very strange can seem real. Well, I can go either way on that one; I think Ken Loach movies seem pretty darn real, for example. But then again so do Peter Greenaway movies, and perhaps the most real movie I’ve seen this year is Josie and the Pussycats.
But we’re talking music here and not movies, although Bjork of course did make her cinematic debut (and finale) in Dancer In The Dark last year. Actually, come to think of it, that’s a perfect example of what I’m talking about. In one way it was a wildly unrealistic movie; it was a musical, for one thing, and no matter how gritty Lars Von Trier’s film style is it’s sort of hard to believe that all that could have actually happened to one person. But at the same time it was very real, on an emotional level, and I’m not ashamed to say that I cried like a wimpy sissy-pants for a long time after it was over.
Homogenic, Bjork’s last proper album (not counting Selmasongs, the Dancer In The Dark soundtrack), explored the contrast between the old and the new, with string-filled songs like Bachelorette competing with weird techno experiments like Pluto. Of course, Homogenic also explored other contrasts; Bachelorette, in my book a strong competitor for the best Bjork song ever, was basically an on-again off-again love song, I think. Aggressive not-in-love songs like 5 Years fought for space with unobtrusive in-love songs like All Is Full Of Love. The whole thing was like two worlds crashing together and seeing what happened, and it ended up working better than either of Bjork’s first two albums (which weren’t at all bad themselves).
Well, now we have Vespertine, with its weird artwork and plain white case with a sticker on it saying what the songs are. I think it would have been better if the whole of the liner notes were composed of the weird pencil-drawings that decorate the album, instead of squeezing the lyrics in, too. But that’s a minor point in the grand scheme of things, I guess. It’s the music we’re all really here for, right?
Well, the album features a whole bunch of good songs, and at least one truly amazing number, which is called Cocoon. The minimalist programming on the track is almost claustrophobic; it’s hard to describe, but it sounds sort of medical in a way. Meanwhile Bjork’s voice is at its cutest, as she sings in an impossibly high (but mature) voice about capturing the perfect boy. At first I thought it was all about sex, especially since the last verse begins with a train of pearls being shot across an ocean, but now I’m not so sure. Well, I think everything’s about sex anyway.
Bjork’s second album, Post, was lyrically her simplest. With songs like Possibly Maybe and The Modern Things you knew exactly what she was singing about and why; Homogenic and Vespertine are a lot more complicated. What, for example, is she singing about in It’s Not Up To You? “If you wake up/ and the day feels broken/ Just lean into the crack/ and it will tremble ever so nicely./ Notice how it sparkles down there.” Now, I’m not the worldliest person out there, but I really honestly don’t know what she’s talking about at all. I believe her, though.
She sings about swallowing glowing lights, swirling black lilies and the sun in her mouth, and it all sounds very magical. Add to that the choir at the end of It’s Not Up To You and the way Pagan Poetry ends with Bjork asserting “I love him, I love him” while a choir of pixie mini-Bjorks concur with “She loves him, she loves him”. She sounds like some kind of sea-princess or something, but a worldly one. She always sings with the curiosity and naiveté of a small child, but her voice is rich and complicated enough, despite the very charmingly weird accent, that she also seems to be sure of what she’s saying, as if she really believes that her mother and son pour warm glowing oil into her at night. This is what makes her so weird, and it’s also what makes it so real.
