Björk - Homogenic POLL

I'm probably alone in that the track I skip most often on the disk is "Bachelorette."

― who's always getting head from the commissioner (Eric H.)

Ditto. Love the lyrics and think it's good and all but tend to skip it... comes off as too histrionic for my taste.

for me this is hunter vs. bachelorette vs. all neon like

Though I love this album through & through with the exception of "Alarm Call" and the original mix of "All Is Full of Love"

Also Bachelorette is the best James Bond song that never was.

A state of emergency is where I want to be, especially if it sounds like the last thirty seconds of "Pluto."

excuse me
but i just have to
explode

explode this body
off me

i'll wake-up tomorrow
brand new

a little bit tired
but brand new

impossible choice... love this album dearly, about as much for mark bell as bjork. the drums on this are so strong. dunno if she'll ever find a better match.

original mix of "All Is Full of Love"

Since you mention it, I think I'm also in the minority that loves the ambient album version of "Love" waaaaaaay more than any of the remixes.

xp

Actually, the match that I don't think she'll ever be able to top is her collaborations with Eumir Deodato, which imo almost always led to transcendent results. He arranged all those impossibly gorgeous & lush string arrangements everyone loves in Post & Homogenic.

i.e., I don't think it's mere coincidence that the albums he hasn't worked on have basically sucked, a few redeeming moments (e.g., "Oceania") aside.

Yeah Joga is pretty good too, the way she uses her voice all the way from 'emotional landscapes' through 'state of emergency' is very impressive...

This - plus, yeah, the strings.

might be joga

"emotional landscapes" is probably the most poignant-while-simplistic pop-bytes i've ever heard

trolling.. zzz

xp

Actually, the match that I don't think she'll ever be able to top is her collaborations with Eumir Deodato, which imo almost always led to transcendent results. He arranged all those impossibly gorgeous & lush string arrangements everyone loves in Post & Homogenic.

― Turangalila

If I'm right he didn't have anything to do with Post. He only collaborated producing and creating arrangements for Homogenic and closest thing he did collaborating for Post is the magnificent Isobel mix for Telegram... stands as the definite version of the song for me.

You're wrong, though. Check again. He wrote all the string arrangements for Post.

that's why the Isobel mix is called the Deodato mix, btw, because the only thing on it is his strings

also John Altman helped create orchestral arrangements of things Eumir wrote.

i'm not getting the "alarm call" love

I think people are giving it unfair love because of the amazing Rhythmic Phonetics mix (DD stand up.)

Anyway: Jóga. Those are Mark Bell beats, right? They are perfect for this song. Everything in this song is perfect for it.

Alarm Call is worthy of all the love. it's a terrific, far-reaching pop song, and it's mixed well.

It's also grating major key drivel and ruins the flow of an otherwise perfect album.

the album would b too heavy without it -- in my mind, "drivel" is just another word for "light," or "untethered."

It's not the only song in a major key, either.

Joga is in a major key too but it's gorgeous. :)

of course, that isn't to say that i would ever choose Alarm Call. and i agree that it's somewhat removed from the point of the album.

"All is Full of Love" is pretty much major too, I think.

i wish some of the other songs on this had a little more of the softness in All is Full of Love. just a little more to break up the homogeneity of the production.

Nah, it's just over 40 minutes. One of those goes a long way.

(Plus, "Unravel" and "Immature")

well, i meant softness in terms of texture as opposed to composition, but i see what you're saying.

Not dismissing entire tonalities, obv. Just find Alarm Call does sound cloying in that way which only forced "joyful" music makes me feel. None of the other major key songs in this album sound this way; they're perfectly balanced.

There definitely is something about it that seems to throw a lot of people off. I've heard a lot of people say they skip it. I always chalked it up to having a latent trip-hop vibe.

Yes, and I can hear that. It's not the production that bothers me, it's the vocal melody tbh.

i can see how it could sound a little pre-packaged in its joy -- point taken on that front. but it did always make me happy, genuinely.

As I said before, I got the radio mix on my iPod, not the album version.

"alarm call" is basically just björk tossing off a michael jackson pastiche though, which isn't necessarily a bad thing but its funk-lite bassline and hip-hop beats are really out of place on an album which is otherwise about ~epic strings~ and *crunching industrial beats* - plus i think she sort of makes a mess out of a perfectly good song by trying to make it too off-kilter and björky rather than a straight-up pastiche - everything in it sits together rather oddly.

i've never heard any of its remixes though! i should.

also, i def remember reading somewhere that it was to be originally titled "jacko" - no idea if this is true though

lex otm

i don't think being out of place is necessarily a bad thing, tho

tho the more i think about Alarm Call now, the less i want to listen to it, i do think it got a lot of people's attention who wouldn't normally have listened to bjork (i can attest to this based on a few friends)

her phrasing on "joga," it's like she's discovering language. amazing song.

don't they say she recorded this in the mountains?

like actually in the fields

Thought it was a mic cord all the way out to the ocean, but that might've been Post.

I'm kind of baffled by people out-and-out dismissing "Alarm Call".

I like Alarm Call but it doesn't quite fit here, it feels like a throwback to the first couple of hours.

I love the opening seconds of both Hunter and Joga but there's nothing here that quite measures up to the swept-off-your-feet-fucking-hell-we're-FLYING feeling of Batchelorette.

Since you mention it, I think I'm also in the minority that loves the ambient album version of "Love" waaaaaaay more than any of the remixes.

Nope, I'm with you. This was my vote, I love all these songs but "Love" just towers above her entire catalog.

Tough call between Joga, Bachelorette and All is Full of Love, but I went for the third one. It's as close to a song capturing a pure emotion as I can think of - spectacular. Strangely I didn't like it that much until I heard the video version of "Love", which helped me understand the structure.

i forgot how much i like 5 years!!

That song sort of describes the exact way I handle relationships.

I mean it describres it backwards... mhmm it's like Bjork is singing it to me... in my mind '5 years' and 'Hounds of Love' by Kate Bush are call and response songs. I sing out 'hounds of love' and then Bjork comes out calling me a coward, telling me I can't handle love... which is pretty much true.

xxp
yeah, surm, 5 years has grown on me a lot over the years.

Would have voted for 'Bachelorette'.

the way her melodies and timing seem to slip around the music.

Latter days Beth Gibbons is very good as this as well.

Is it that time of year again where I listen to this album non-stop? This is a great album for spring time, you can almost hear the cold fading away.

Jóga is the obvious winner but I kinda wish Unravel had placed 2nd and Bachelorette 3rd. It predates the sound she would be following on Vespertine.

This is an album without a weak link, but it bums me out a little that the songs I'd call my top three were in the bottom four here.

The album version (which is actually the howie b remix) of all is full of love is inferior to the original version I have no idea why they decided to choose that one.

I strongly disagree, but that's a battle I've been losing for 16.5 years now.

the Plaid version is the best one.

I do like the radio mix/video mix of "Alarm Call" way better than the one on the album.

"Alarm Call" definitely would've taken this for me. What a great tune that is.

Alarm Call is great but it sounds a tad out of place in here. It would've been more suited on her previous albums.

To test how consistent an album sounds I usually try to pair one song with another... mirroring sounds or themes. In the case of Alarm Call, Pluto or Immature are its closest companions and they feel forced. At any rate this album is amazingly consistent. For example for this album I'd say these make great combos:

Jóga / Bachelorette
Unravel / 5 Years
Hunter / Pluto
All Is Full Of Love / All Neon Like

Which leaves us with:
Immature / Alarm Call

God, this album is so damn perfect.

you can't handle love. it's obvious.

What the fuck is she singing after 'your doors are shut"? no lyrics sites have that listed and I can't understand it; maybe it's in icelandic

(on 'all if full of love')