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today's listening
bjork medulla (on Elektra)
Bjork, Medulla (2004)
With this release, Bjork steps intriguingly out of the pop idiom in favor of more experimental processed-vocal terrain. Early hype led me to expect a sister record to Maja Ratkje's Voice (2003)—something gnarled, angular, and witchy—but the actual disc takes a different tack, and emerges as a much more operatic animal. After the initial novelty wears off it begins to seem like a natural fit: Bjork has, after all, never really shied from trading in the operatic currencies of high bombast and melodrama. The danger with melodrama, of course, is that it can so easily slip into the realm of the inadvertently comic, and when Bjork chooses (for instance) to back herself with a massed male choir the album veers dangerously in that direction, but by and large the pomp and excess are countered by Bjork's characteristic inscrutable translucence. The result is a daring, if not always successful, album. Thanks to Vingus. |
Friday, October 15, 2004
10:38 PM
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