There is one simple word to describe her: brilliant. In terms of innovation and experimentation in pop music over the past decade, few compare to Bj?rk in either magnitude or daring. From the fractured, stylistically multiform Post to the polarized beats and brooding strings of Homogenic, she has exhibited the ability to define and reshape the cutting edge of modern electronic music and to do so without compromise. A casual listen to classics like "Joga" and "Hyperballad" reveal intricate layers of sound and meaning, displaying a potent artistic inventiveness that contrasts sharply with the recycled garbage typical of the MTV generation. She deconstructs and emotes where others copy and booty-shake, and we should be all the more thankful for it.
With these high expectations of utter brilliance, I was far from disappointed from what I heard on Vespertine (WEA/Elektra). The Icelandic diva's fourth proper solo album - not including the disappointingly average soundtrack Selmasongs - takes a turn away from the progressively darker themes of her last two records, opting to celebrate the joys of simple, domestic matters. We find our tunesmith in love, at home and in the mood for private confessions. Where the scope of Bj?rk's previous work resonated with palpable energy and bombast, the new album approaches the listener in an introverted, "hermit-style" shell of subdued beats and whispered vocals. While not likely to get you moving on the dance floor, the album's underlying emotion is sure to get you moving between the sheets.
These sensuous and sensual tones weave their way throughout the lyrics. Themes of wetness, surrender, penetration and the warmth of one's lover indicate maturity in songwriting that only hinted to in her previous work. Rather than the refrain of "this is sex without touching" on Post's "Enjoy," we hear the far more explicit "he's still inside of me" of Vespertine's "Cocoon." The majority of the songs deal with carnal desires and personal pleasures, frankly and with an endearing honesty from Bj?rk. Though not entirely raunchy, it won't take a room full of perverts to decipher some of the record's more risqu areas.
Musically, this is Bj?rk's most understated album to date. Though majestic at times, courtesy of a full choir and the soaring harp of Zeena Parkins, and colored with beautiful melodies from sources both analog and digital, the bulk of the noise on Vespertine comes from a vast stockpile of sampled household noises. Blips and bleeps are constructed from the shuffling of cards, crackling of ice, tapping of pens and clanging of pans and distorted into a percussion backbone by the minimalist electro-wizards Matmos. Considering that their last major release, A Chance to Cut is a Chance to Cure, was crafted from taped plastic surgery sessions, Matmos is all too familiar with eccentric weirdness. However, even at its loudest moments, Vespertine seems to whisper at every point Homogenic screamed.
Opening with the lo-fi crackles and scratches of "Hidden Place" and "Cocoon," the record immediately defines its pace as pensive in pace and mature in tone. Similar in structure to the first track, "It's Not Up to You" rises above the pack with its incredibly catchy chorus. "Pagan Poetry" trudges along with a darker beat, though ending with Bj?rk pleading, "I love him, I love him, I love him." to the point where we can't help but believe her. On its own merits, the first half of the album is highly representative of Bj?rk's new sound: orgasmic and post-coital within the span of a song.
In contrast, the second half experiments with this new style as it opens with "Frosti," Bj?rk's first non-vocal album track. It is a simple vignette of music box melodies, used as a transition to the albums most pop moment, "Aurora," a song replete with a choir and a not-so-subtle metaphor to sexual fluids. The most experimental moment of new album comes with Bj?rk's interpretation of an e.e. cummings poem through song. cummings, known for his frank and colorful language in regards to sexual love, fits the tone of this album perfectly. Where the poet evokes pleasures of the body through text, Vespertine makes it a multimedia experience.
The final track, "Unison," is a moment of astounding accomplishment, a sublime ode to an utter surrender to pleasure. Which is what I am going to urge you to do. Give in. Do not resist the multitude of pleasures encompassed in Vespertine. To any hypocritical guys out there wary of buying anything un-macho, I close with the wise words of Maude Lebowski, my Bj?rk-by-proxy:
"My art has been commended as being strongly vaginal, which bothers some men. The word itself makes some men uncomfortable. Vagina. They don't like hearing it and find it difficult to say; whereas, without batting an eye, a man will refer to his dick or his rod or his Johnson.
