POLL Neon Like -- ILM artist poll #88 -- BJÖRK (voting open until April 27, 2018)

I mean, "Homogenic" was titled as such almost as a reaction to "Post"'s eclecticism. Eclecticism looks good on a Bjork album imo! Vespertine's best moments imo ("Cocoon", "An Echo, A Stain") are the songs that diverge from the album's thesis

i think that's still possible to hear now, or at least that's the vibe i accessed when i put it on immediately after debut xp

singular bjork (debut) becomes multibjork (post) becomes hypercompressed multibjork (homogenic)

fgti is otm but i still prefer the consistency of homogenic or vespertine, then and now

Biophilia is better than Volta

Yep even though it's not represented in what I voted for, this has been my big realization from this thread, and I've enjoyed discovering Biophilia.

Gonna listen to this today (Vespertine b-sides):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-whnnJ6WKRA

Debut is also hugely eclectic. I just feel like Post is a few amazing tracks and the rest are not exactly filler, but just not up to the standard of the LPs before and after.

Vespertine and Volta are the LPs I missed at the time (aside from the singles) and now sound wonderful and fresh.

I think Talking Book similarly intended to carry on with Music of My Mind's sense of boundless possibility/eclecticism.

volta was such a huge disappointment. caught the tour and she was on fire though, declare independence was way more of a rave-up live and she was doing cool stuff with tech and kaos pad like devices at the time. wanderlust in my top bjork songs ever tho

Debut begins eclectic, and then starts to sound stylistically monothematic-- I said so upthread-- "The Anchor Song" appears like whaaat? after a run of relaxing-in-a-hotel-lobby songs

I hate "Declare Independence" as much as I hate "My Girls"-- corny individualism masquerading as romance

dunno, declare independence at least sounded fun, unlike the rest of volta which is laboured af - i mean drawing restraint 9 came before it which is basically trash

Or in Bjork's case, protest song

In the wake of a financial crisis in which Iceland milked millions of dollars from German, English and Dutch small businesses (via IceSave) to essentially finance their own zero-emission geothermal paradise, with a Range Rover in every driveway, a song by an woman from that blessed country of 350k people claiming that we should all declare independence from our respective states and make our own flags really made me wanna take a literal shit on a physical copy of that album

Uh sorry, when I dislike a song I really kind of pull no punches

I love Bjork she rules

passion makes this place great so i'm all for it bud

The main problem with "Declare Independence" is that it's not "Pluto." At all.

Declare Independence has very corny lyrics but it's easily the standout of Volta anyway.

my response to lyrical approach on volta is, like, “oh, ok, REALLY?” for almost the whole thing

still vividly remember staggering up to a coffeeshop counter in disbelief upon first hearing "Pluto"

"is this.... Bjork??"

biophilia’s clunky sjon lyrics about cells dividing were a real relief

the song on volta about terrorism is clumsy

Haven't been paying attention to the lyrics on Volta, just the instrumentation. Declare Independence is perhaps the worst track on there.

the lowest point for me on volta is "innocence" which sounds like a track timbo and danja couldn't even get onto loose

innocence sounds dated on arrival

this is wonderful

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=viX7tcKXehY

I hate "Declare Independence" as much as I hate "My Girls"-- corny individualism masquerading as romance

What really sold me on this song was Lotic dropping the instrumental in his Boiler Room mix, it sounded insane in that context

I love Timbaland's production on "Earth Intruders" and "Innocence" but feel the songs are too weak for me to want to listen to them. I had no songs from "Volta" on my ballot. When it came out I found myself wanting to like it, to defend it, but happily, subsequent albums made me realize that it was a misstep in her latter-day arc and that I can safely forget about it

i feel like one of the ideas on volta (homogenic but horns instead of strings) is really good, but when combined with the other way less good ideas it just makes for a really confused and confusing record

it wasn't a bad idea but none of the tracks that went for that really live up to the idea, like Wanderlust is just tedious.

It was cool to see an all-female brass band in full costume on that tour, and the reworkings of non-Volta tracks was great

In fact, any reworking of a catalog track with "this year's touring lineup" is always a highlight for me, she could really just put together a tour with all new instrumentation and no new album and it'd be prob her best-ever tour

i love Bjork but i'm not voting, more interested in the rollout to dig into the decent chunk of her career that I didn't follow closely.

our son is a fan of Bjork ever since we were in line at the Amoeba buy counter and a woman in front of us who was selling her son's CD collection at his request noticed him staring at the cover of Volta which was on top of the box, and she asked him, "Would you like this CD?" We listened to it in the car and he was amazed. He also really likes this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFTliOnoNSk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ao5Sd6BCK4

this is a nice rework - harpischord version of Aurora in Icelandic, according to comments her daughter is in the choir too

Does anyone rep for the Dirty Projectors collab?

(I enjoy it)

ok Vespertine b-sides are amazing

yes they are

Foot soldier! Mother heroic

The Bjork/DPs collab features some of my favourite DPs songs ("Beautiful Mother" i.e.) but despite the largeness of Bjork's name on the record I don't think of it as a particularly Bjork-y album

True, I think I remember reading that Longstreth wrote it (with her in mind)

vespertine shares a dynamic with radiohead's amnesiac for me, in that 1) both records might be my favorites by their respective artists 2) the songs that didn't make each record are better than many of the songs that did

"Kinetic" and "Worrywort" were the best Radiohead ever did at trying to make a Bjork track. Better than anything on 'Kid A' or 'Amnesiac'.

I'm so here for Björk singing "Aurora" in her living room backed by bored schoolchildren while reading the lyrics from a piece of paper, and then curtsying at the end.

No, seriously, I love it. I wish she sung in Icelandic more often on her albums. BTW that's Jónas Sen on harpsichord and Ólöf Arnalds on koto.

so much bjork that I love but all these opinions are exhausting

lol

well opinion THIS: a bjork supercut with all the different times and ways she has sung "e-mo-tion-al"

Vulnicura really is a bookend to Vespertine, isn’t it? A kind of negative refraction. Listening to them in close proximity makes that clearer to me

Utopia feels like the most shrouded of all of her albums, with the middle section almost completely submerged, but it is also maybe the most compelling for me, the one I most want to revisit

I think the relative inaccessibility of those two albums has made them underrated, but they are both really beautiful

Vulnicura really is a bookend to Vespertine, isn’t it? A kind of negative refraction. Listening to them in close proximity makes that clearer to me

It definitely is. Both are about the same lover (Barney), and I'm in awe at how she managed to make Vulnicura the 'anti-Vespertine', yet sonically and thematically staying as close to the spring of ecstacy that Vespertine was as possible. It is a refraction, yet also something entirely new, something of its own. Vulnicura feels gravely underrated, but I guess we'll soon see if that is indeed so. I for one rate it far higher than Volta and Medulla (Biophilia is another story all together tbh)

i'm... largely baffled by utopia, i assume a second listen will help?

i do like that the front cover looks like amphibian bjork is handing me a weird flute, i assume for some kind of journey

for a place to start, the last couple of songs of Utopia kind of emerge from the mist. Future Forever I think is one of the best ever Bjork tracks

i think i'm gonna vote for "black lake" it's pretty abyssal

i was listening to some of my contenders on random, and "black lake" sounded so full and wide

god vulnicura is really good