Bjork

Debut

Following an unfortunate concurrence where I was reading about The Moomins (darker and more beautiful than I could have hoped) and my thinking about this album, I had days where all I could think of was “There’s definitely, definitely, definitely no logic to Moomin behaviour…) which I still rather enjoy.

Chris Heppell and I had some night in Edinburgh of smoking rather a lot of weed and delineating each Bjork album according to what material it reminded us of., This was wood. The others will be told as they come.

I’ve mentioned Bjork already in the context of vocal production and scope of lyrics and the unfortunate way people have of regarding such people as “kooky”, meaning of course “women”. The textures of the arrangement, even once one has gotten over the many different and bizarre things she can do with her voice (how much of it is not being a speaker of English as a first language? As Sofia says, am I Swedish or interesting?)

There’s a big smell of mid-90s dance to this tho…it’s on this album where this is most prevalent that the amazing landscape she builds (for me) collapses and meanders…what’s that quote about David Byrne about “in his quest for irony he rushes to the brink of irrelevance…”? I agree a little on this and I certainly think Joanna Newsome is guilty of this too…”It’s a hot day and I’m dressed lightly…” – there’s a song on some advert at the minute in which a female singers breathlessly confirms that she is waiting with cho-co-lates and…dan-de-liyunnnns

Venus as a boy seems the most sing-y so far, a certain element of world music, the middle eight bit full of those Bjork-isms Chris K and I know as the “Chairman Mao” refrain…I love the celebration in here…the next song (There’s more to life than this) was one of my earliest favourites…I love the idea of her running our (live at the Milk Bar toilets) to a bathroom where little microphones wait for her…her vocal delivery was always going to be fodder for people to laugh at though…Sofia showed me a French & Saunders thing which is pretty funny and yes, pretty accurate…that bloody video for Big Time Sensuality (coming up later) had a lot to answer for, and I think maybe made her a figure of fun…not helped much by the big It’s oh so quiet thing…photos of her with swans round her neck etc…it’s still so dance-y…that was the time so it’s OK, not a criticism, the backing vocals here are cheesy but good.... it’s interesting how the 90s sound historic now…

It swings gently into the Rodgers and Hammerstein “Like some-one in love”…hearing this song made me re-think ideas about cover songs being evil, terrible, lacking in originality…shows here that context and form are all, the unexpected is always upon us…in the same way as “Till there was you” on the With the Beatles album, a sudden step backwards in time is cool, in the sense of a breeze. This song seems to have the quality like “It must be love” by Madness; of the physical and mental sensations of love – an opening of space and clarity. Not many songs can do that.

The arrival of Big Time Sensuality disappoints me, this album seems to take a downturn for me at this point until the last two songs. I went out to a ukulele night at Mr Wolf’s recently, the first band on was a rock&roll tribute kinda band…playing all the old pleasers (I’ll admit I was happy to hear Johnny B Goode which has taken on thrice-played nuclear weight for me I’m afraid; heard on the radio as a young couple watch the planes go by, heard again as the first public safety announcements begin, and then one last time in the post-nuclear world, a ghost on maybe the last radio alive as our new heroine picks her way through the landscape of bricks and the dangling feet of lynch mobs –who knows why? Who cares? – to give birth in an abandoned hospital) and everyone dancing dancing dancing…I don’t like rock and roll much at all, and was particularly displeased that night (wanted ukulele action) and so could only hear the music as a series of signals, building a further signal of rebellion…the baseline going up and down and up and down, the lyrics as formulaic as you like…all to me sounding like a code for “Dance you fucking monkeys…this is having a good time and you are having it…dance”. Dance music seems to be “dance you fucking lab monkeys”…dance music (like all music) has all these codes running through it, it is nowhere near as simple as a nice tune and a rhythm to dance to…if we’re stuck in our post-now world then everything has a meaning and we run through the museum (smash n grab) messing up the exhibits but never losing them…although I start to realise these songs I had written off in my head have more to them than first thought…I recognise one from an advert which disturbs me…the words resonate for me especially at the moment and I think of Bjork in the same way as Evelyn from American Psycho…that amazing section of “This was the bone season for me and I needed a holiday. I suggested summer in the Hamptons and Evelyn, like a spider, accepted”. I note the use of tabla pretty much everywhere in this album and want to comment on it, but I remember I may have overused them in songs I wrote around this time too…The Anchor Song was another early discovery of delight, and I’m pretty sure it stayed in my head when I wrote a certain section of The Wasteland…even before that I was held by the call and response between the voice and the instruments…the clashes of notes, the clumsiness…

The last song, Play Dead is so grand, dramatic. I have a strange anecdote attached to it…when I worked at an autistic school in Edinburgh, I worked with a teenage boy who asked me in his special robot voice to make him a tape of “dance-music-from-the-late-80s-preferably-87-through-to-1992”. As he loved this music so (and I recently acquired some old CDs of it, now unfortunately stolen by evil ex-housemate who as well as screwing us on the rent and bills managed to make off with a selection of her favourite souvenirs from myself and the two girls who also put up with her…I saw her rifling openly through Rosie’s pile of clothes once for a scarf she decided she wanted…) I was able to use the promise of music as a behavioural tactic with him. He unfortunately went through a phase of being “inappropriate” with a boy in his class. I was asked to talk to him about it, and he said “It’s like that Bjork song, play dead. It is sometimes just like sleeping” was the only answer I could get from him…it was an interesting subterfuge if ever there was one to avoid answering difficult questions. It also lent the song a peculiar perspective forever in my head…