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Long before Thom Yorke bought the Skam back catalogue, everyone's
favorite wide-eyed elfin pop princess was making like a mad professor
of construction (importantly, neither de- or re-), engineering
sublime, popular pop-songs underpinned by abstract electro workings,
oft aided by the brill Mark Bell. Four years on from the
crunch-and-thunk wasteland — equal parts retrofuturist
industrial squalor and sweeping glacial copter-shots — of
Homogenic, the e'er-charismatic Björk returns with
Vespertine, a long-awaited longplayer that follows an extended
interlude of video-clip opulence, painfully guttural
method/madness-"acting," and one mid-length film-related soundtrack.
Working largely with American sampledelic darlings Matmos, here
Björk continues to mine the fine line of minimalist lushness
that her last album gave birth to; with tiny, crackling, skittery
beats weaving open-toned ambient beds in which her breathy,
pushed-forward vocals lithely lay, the closeness and drama of her
every syllable commanding attention (even as vocals are often
multi-tracked into armies of Björks, cooing and sighing from
different sides, like seductive devils and sweethearted angels in
each ear). Subtle colorings of pastel keyboards are often mixed in,
and, over such exercises in quietude, out come the sumptuous big
guns, with Björk's more commanding register, an orchestra, and a
full choir all on hand to lift the songs up to the kind of hymnal,
choral levels perpetrated by popular Icelandic rock band Sigur
Rós. However, that's not to say that such a combo's symphonic
rock has had any direct influence on Björk — I mean, come
on, that's Metallica's trick — but when "Hidden Place" finds the
grim, grimy beat-tracks and spat-out-vocal'd verses washed over by an
opera-house-sized support crew, comparisons to such grandiose workers
are inevitable. Such said, the album makes a more impressive claim to
genius status on its more minimal moments. The enveloping
claustrophobia of the hush'd weaves and the frailest wails of
strung-out singing make for quiet reverie, divination in small
gestures that resonate with grandness, amplified in the environment
like shadows distorted upwards by low-light. The inconsistent
intricacies of "Undo" and "Cocoon" wrap the listener in a blanket
spun from so much sonic silk, with even the idlest thoughts turned to
idyll dreaming.
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