Bjork is a heavyweight. It's hard to pinpoint when exactly it happened, when she expanded from the quirky ex-Sugarcube who pixied her way through those great early videos (Spike Jonze's production of "It's So Quiet" is still a low-budget marvel) into her rightful place as a global trend-setter, beloved by a massive cult of fans and fellow mucisians, but for me it was "Homogenic."
The third album's colossal opening combo of "The Hunter" and "Joga" played
Bjork's utterly unique, unpredictable voice and skittish rhythms against a
background of stuttering beats and swirling electronics, and the result was
as organic and rapturous as anything ever achieved by a four-piece
rock-band.
The first time I heard Bjork lift into the chorus of "Joga" ("And you push
me up to / This state oooooof e-mer-GEN-cy") at the precise moment that the
elusive beat finally solidifies beneath her, I actually felt my heart swell
inside me. It's a song that reminds us why we love music.
The claustrophobic "Vespertine" left me a little cold, if only because it
felt suffocatingly micro after the sweep and openness of "Homogenic".
The fantastic "Medulla", however, takes the best parts of both of its
predecessors, reaching rarefied heights and revealing whispered secrets, all in an exciting new sound-world that only Bjork could reveal.
The conceit of "Medulla" is well-known by now: Almost every sound on the
album, with the exception of some occasional keyboards and a dash of
'programming', is made by the human voice. No guitars, no drums, no string
sections, just vocals. Every whistle, squeak, squawk and howl has a larynx
behind it.
To be fair, Bjork's voice isn't alone here. She's recruited a little
all-star team of vocal artists, including beat-boxer Rahzel (The Roots), the uncategorizable Mike Patton (Faith No More, Mr. Bungle, and fifty million other insane bands), Soft Machine co-founder Robert Wyatt, and off-the-grid folks like Shlomo and Dokaka (both beat-boxers), with the Icelandic Choir acting as a sort of house band.
Bjork is on her own for some of these tracks, though. The brief but lovely
"Show Me Forgiveness" features an unaccompanied Bjork doing what she does
best, weaving her strange, personal lyrics into an equally strange melody
that dips and soars with erratic beauty. "Öll Birtan" piles several
interlocking vocal lines on top of each other, creating an eerie
hall-of-mirrors effect, which is enhanced by Bjork's singing in rolling
Icelandic.
The gorgeous "Desired Constellation" wraps lovingly around a probing Bjork
vocal. Against a trembling background resembling crickets' night-song,
Bjork haltingly unwraps her self-doubt.
"It's tricky when you feel someone
has done something on your behalf
It's slippery when your sense of justice
murmurs underneath and is asking you
how am I going to make it right?"
Bjork sings slowly, deliberately, as though trying to make sense of her
emotions and truly unaware what she's going to say until the moment she
sings it. Her flair for the dramatic and a sense of genuine vulnerability
recall "Vespertine's" emotional nakedness, but where "Vespertine" seemed
walled-in by its stylistic choices, the spacious arrangement of "Desired
Constellation" evokes a starry night.
"Medulla" delivers these songs and more in the way of free-time ballads
("Vökuro", another Icelandic reverie, may be the best of the bunch), but the
album really kicks when Bjork lets the beat drop. Opener "Pleasure Is All
Mine" chugs along on a lock-tight marriage of Rahzel's laidback beat and
Bjork's throaty bassline. Bjork croons seductively, bouncing off the
rhythms and sliding into heart-breaking falsetto as the choir (and Mike
Patton, in full Benedictine-monk mode) swell behind her. Patton gets in
some heavy-breathing and weird animal noises, and Bjork's satisfied sigh
sees us to the door.
Rahzel weighs in heavy on "Where Is the Line", providing a thumping
double-bass rumble that would break glass. Mike Patton (who has assayed the
all-vocal album himself in one of his myriad identities) breaks out his
scary-dude voice, singing along with Bjork on the song's mathy refrain. He
also kicks in a squealy reptile noise that sounds exactly like a bent
guitar-string.
It's Rahzel's alchemical beats that carry the day, though. The guy is to
this record what Jack Nicholson was to "Batman", and "Medulla's" best songs
almost take on the character of duets.
The incredible talent of her collaborators drives and inspires Bjork to
amazing heights. "Medulla" does whatever it wants, slowing to a crawl on
the dirge-y "Submarine" (think of those weird instrumentals on Bowie's
"Heroes" album); blissing out on the imminently danceable "Who Is It"
(expect a monster club-remix of this one); even getting all lounge on your
ass on the lush imagist poem "Oceania."
And then there's "Mouth's Cradle." God, words fail me. Clipped voices
flitter through the background, the choir groans and soars, Rahzel kicks it
like John friggin' Bonham, and Bjork relentlessly lets fly with one amazing
line after another:
"He always has a hope for me
always see me when nothing else
and everyone have left
that ghost is brighter than anyone
and fulfills me with hope
those beams assure me
and you can use these teeth as a ladder
up to the mouth's cradle, the mouth's cradle
and you can follow these notes i'm singing
up to the mouth's cradle, the mouth's cradle."
Whew. There's your "Joga" moment.
"Medulla" ends oddly with the brazenly 'pop' "Triumph of a Heart". The
cheesy 'human-trombone' and Bjork's vacuous delivery take a little air out
of the album's grandeur, but this is "Medulla's" only misstep. However she
got here, Bjork is indeed a heavyweight, and right now she's in her prime. |