News about the upcoming Björk album Volta.

Bjork - Totempole
Due for release on 07/05/2007

our price: £9.99 Delivered

shame, 'cos I like the sound of that!

oh man the new one's even worse

into it. hating on bjork doing bjork at this point is kinda zzzz

Love it to bits. Wonderful vocal performances + Melodyne fun, a vocal de-esser, zero fan service. "Dark Matter" and "Hollow" remind me of my favourite Art Bears.

(This being "Biophilia", not "Volta", of which I am also fond.)

really the entirety of "dull flame of desire" is tepid bullshit

― surm, Friday, October 16, 2009 1:56 PM (3 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

:( one of the most disappointing things ive ever read from surm

i love this album start to finish

surm OTM

oh man the new one's even worse

The thing I will say about Bjork lately is that each album makes me appreciate the one before it that much more in retrospect.

Been listening to Volta since the most recent Bjork singles poll (where every single post-vespertine got shunned) and I found this review that proposes an alternate tracklist on RYM:

I, like many including Björk herself, am confused as to why One Little Indian declared that Volta was BJÖRK'S RETURN TO POP MUSIKZ when Björk's previous album, the a cappella Medúlla, is simultaneously the poppiest and most experimental thing she's ever done. I can sense some of you drifting away from me and that's most likely because you, like One Little Indian, believe that having non-conventional instrumentation means that something isn't a pop album. Medúlla has more pop melodies flying out of its ass than any Björk album since Post but, onoes, there's some Inuit throat singing which obviously means that it is an experimental album. Of course, this nonsense about this being an über pop album was most likely a piss poor attempt by One Little Indian, for whom Björk was really their only knock-out artist before Paul McCartney signed with them in 2009, to sell more copies.

Volta isn't as bad as it's made out to be but it's the tracklisting, which has always been Björk's Achilles tendon, which lets it down. Here are my suggestions as to how Volta could have been improved:

1. Get rid of the filler: "Hope", "Innocence" and "My Juvenile"
"Hope" is obvious: it's corny, it's cheesy, it sucks, and everyone cares as much about your simplistic political statement about suicide bombings as much as they care about this list. "Innocence" just feels horrifically out of place anywhere on the album. "My Juvenile" shouldn't be on the album for reason number two:

2. Put "The Dull Flame of Desire" as the closer
No joke. "The Dull Flame of Desire" is a damn good song that doesn't get the respect it deserves. Where a song is placed on an album can make all the difference in the world. The fact is that "The Dull Flame of Desire" is a slow-building seven-and-a-half minute song that comes after two six minute songs. The first three songs combined are nearly 20 minutes long. That's way too much fiddling about for album like this.

3. Put the songs that actually represent the sound of the album closer to the beginning.
In the middle of Volta is a lush triple-kill in "I See Who You Are", "Vertebrae by Vertebrae" and "Pneumonia". When I think of Volta, I don't think of the driving drums of "Earth Intruders" nor the near complete mental breakdown of "Declare Independence", but of these three songs located in the centre which display what One Little Indian should have marketed Volta as: a companion piece to 1997's Homogenic. That album mixed electronics and strings, this album mixes electronics and brass. These three songs, like "The Dull Flame of Desire", are not given their proper dues because of where they are placed.

We're down to seven songs totaling just over 38 minutes. Regardless of what anyone tries to tell you, there is absolutely nothing wrong with short albums. Delivering a short and concise work is better than a long, meandering and aimless one. The great stuff on here is so overshadowed by subpar material that the album gets dragged down because of it. "Hope", "Innocence" and "My Juvenile" are not only poor songs, they ruin the cohesion and sound of the entire album. They spoil the mood by disjointing the flow and destroy what was potentially another masterpiece by the greatest and most unlikely pop superstar of that past 20 years.

I don't necessarily agree with cutting those three songs as I actually enjoy them but he has a point, they ruin the cohesion of the album and sound out of place. Innocence is basically Alarm Call Pt. 2 and as much as I love Alarm Call it also sounded out of place in Homogenic.

Anyhoo, I tried this reviewers suggestion and treated the album as an EP:

1. Earth Intruders
2. Wanderlust
3. I See Who You Are
4. Vertebræ by Vertebræ
5. Pneumonia
6. Declare Independence
7. The Dull Flame of Desire

I'd argue Declare Independence sounds out of place but the song was a live highlight of her tour.

Any track list that retains "Wanderlust" gets a pass from me.

"declare independence" is a bit too blatantly "pluto" redux but it's also the only song here that had a lasting impact beyond the album campaign

"Declare Independence" took on hilarious new levels of terrible when the stock market crashed and the people Iceland voted to keep the Range Rovers and home saunas that their crooked banks had bought for them, I mean, I get that that song is probably meant to be personal and social independence instead of "Iceland" but I can't help it, that country is the national embodiment of gifted child syndrome

I've uncharacteristically doctored the track list of Volta as well but it involved cutting all the "poppy" tracks ("Independence", "Intruders", "Innocence") and subbing in some choice moments from Drawing Restraint

Thought it was dedicated to Tibetans or something.

Christ that review is the douchiest thing I've read in a while