Bjork must be very, very brave or very, very crazy.
I tend to lean towards the former while others, including my boyfriend Brian, think she's just nuts*. We have a framed poster of the cover of Homogenic with Bjork in futuristic geisha garb hanging in our living room. Brian thinks of it as the Halloween decoration that never got taken down, occasionally making noises about how it would be great campfire fodder. Hah! The smoke from the laminated paper will make the marshmallows taste funny.
At a party, my friend Randy H. and I heatedly discussed Bjork's career. Bjork appealed to him in her pop/dance Debut but quickly lost him when she started taking an entire minute to sing one word. I thought that Bjork gained depth as an artist as she followed her own muse. Granted, as with other great artists, there is a tendency to overshoot the mark and risk alienating their audience. Some critics may say that these days, only aliens would listen to her music and I don't think they mean people from New York City.
I think that the 'crazy' Bjork image comes from two incidents: one, when she wore a dress that looked like a swan's carcass draped on her to the 2001 Academy Awards; the other, when she slugged a female TV reporter in a Thai airport for shoving a microphone in her son's face. At least Bjork didn't call her son 'blanket.'
Well, Randy is not going to like Medulla, Bjork’s new CD. The title refers to the 'inner part of an animal or plant structure or the lower part of the human brain'. The album's concept is to use only human voices as accompaniment, fusing choral music, Icelandic hymns and a human beatbox together with the singer's own quirky vocal style. There is only the barest instrumentation, a few tinkles of the piano, a low rumble of a synth sprinkled in a couple of songs.
Article comments
1 - Jon Bauer
I agree that the album is hit or miss. When it hits, it's very cool and really deep. When it misses, it kinda sucks.
- Jon
2 - Mark Saleski
i think it's the best thing she's ever done.
read about it here
and for the record, i'm not gay and live in a 150-yrs old colonial. ;-)
3 - Tom Johnson
When it came out, I was really intrigued by it and listened to it quite a bit. I then moved on to other things, and when I got my Ipod I loaded it into it. Unfortunately, when those tunes would roll around, I'd quickly skip past them, annoyed. I tried listening to the album as a whole again and just found that I simply could not stand it. Once the initial intrigue of hearing the structure an "all vocals" album wore off, I had no desire to listen to it anymore. Post and Homogenic remain the only albums of hers that I go back to repeatedly - the rest I find just irritating. I've finally come to the conclusion that I just don't like Bjork that much, but I respect her and her music tremendously.
4 - Rodney Welch
It's a great CD, and I listen to it often. Many is the time in the last few months that I'd be working at the computer and this CD would play through several times. It's a record that only gets better over time. Best cut: "Triumph of a Heart."
5 - Temple Stark
I can't fault people who don't like her - she has a voice that grates or bathes you. I like her a lot but I can't just plug her most recent albums in and just listen. Debut was like that.
She is very uch self-indulgent and that's usually hard to get used to whomever is the artist.
The Sugarcubes were mmuch more accesible than her latest two
6 - Mark Saleski
i can't fault anybody for not liking anything, really.
but...i don't get the idea that something is 'self-indugent'.
in this case, choral music plays a big part in icelandic culture. she had an idea to contruct music surrounding the voice. how is that self-indulgent?
7 - enmanuel
i believe bjork has proven to be one of the most coherent all muscical artists today. in retrospective (and being completely critical and unbiased), she is an example of an artist evolving and pushing the standard as to what is expected from a composer/singer. i think you were expecting something more predictble.
8 - Alice
I thinks it's a ground breaking album that takes a few listens to grow. According to Bjork on the Jonathan Ross show a few months ago, Medulla literally means 'marrow', as in the vegetable, and nothing to do with the brain or flesh. She said she likes to keep things simple and it's only the critics that find these deep hidden meanings in her work. I tend to agree, but I often wonder where she gets these ideas from...
9 - Chris C.
I love Medulla, I think it's another step forward in Bjork's bold career. It is beautiful. The simplicity and complexity within it create relatively ground-breaking sonic landscapes. Hopefully the music fiends in America will be able to appreciate it once they go to college. Vote Bjork for Queen of the world...
10 - No Milk
True Artists are by nature self-indulgent. They follow their muse. I'd rather an artist be self-indulgent than totally a sell-out. It would be great if somehow the artist accomodates her audience, that would be the ideal, but I wouldn't fault them if they didn't.
11 - Victor Plenty
Wow! All this time I've been a "True Artist" and not even known it! Now all I have to do is persuade millions of people to send me money for being self-indulgent.
"Buy my uniquely and artistically folded toilet paper tubes, people! That's True Art you're lookin' at, right there!"
Yeah, that's it. That's the ticket.
Or... maybe the whole concept of "True Artists" is a fallacy. People create art, and sometimes if they're very lucky, other people like it enough to pay them. Many artists create art as an act of service to others, not merely to indulge their own desires. This all by itself does not reduce the value of their art.
(None of this rant is against Bjork, by the way. I tend to like the majority of her music, depending on my mood.)
12 - Jimboooo
I really want to listen to this album because I love her voice and the songs are deep and complex, but every time I do by the time the album is halfway through I feel slightly insane! There is just something dark and twisting about the way it plays out that seems to trigger certain things in my brain. I think what is so different about this album is that it leaves you no handle to hold on to. Just as you feel you know where the melody is going it changes and vears off in a totaly seperate direction. Going to keep on trying with it though because I think I will reap the rewards much like with Alanis' Supposed Former blah blah blah.. an album that takes maybe 20 or 30 listens to fully enjoy but when you do boy is it good!