Bjork Post Poll

Dan I am just agreeing with you all over the place here

Homogenic is the one that for me has the dated 90s production (late 90s techno vs early 90s trip hop?), but that may be because I'll still fuck with some trip hop, but techno is dead to me.

I don't think I said this album was an embarrassment of riches,

No, I said it.

Debut is maybe a notch below Post; Bjork seems to be wearing a musical straitjacket, and it's becoming, as far as it goes; it sounds like she's struggling to say something in an idiom she's halfway to figuring out. That's why I love "Come To Me," "Violently Happy," and "Venus as a Boy."

I feel like ███████████ you right this second!

I don't know if it's the best thing on there but "The Modern Things" is my jam on this album.

Overall, this is my favorite album of hers even though I never, ever, ever play "Army of Me" when I listen to it.

Dan we are EXACTLY THE SAME IN EVERY WAY. Well, in Bjorkpinions at least.

Along with It's Oh So Quiet, Army of Me is one of the most insular tracks on the album. But more than any Bjork album, I see post as being comprised beautifully of many insular pieces that gel together more with time. these days i even put army of me on by itself sometimes!

"It's Oh So Quiet" is a great song and her best ever vocal performance. This is not to say that the other, and less conventional, songs on this album are bad in any way, but "It's Oh So Quiet" is just too great.

Also props to "Possibly Maybe" but it sounded better after Goldie remixed it.

What is with the disliking of "Army of Me"?

"Isobel" by far.

Worst track is "Quiet" though.

How can Geir like "It's Oh So Quiet" so much when Bjork didn't write it? FWIW I boringly went with "Hyperballad" though "Headphones" runs it close because it's sexier.

"It's Oh So Quiet" is a great song and her best ever vocal performance. This is not to say that the other, and less conventional, songs on this album are bad in any way, but "It's Oh So Quiet" is just too great.

― Geir Hongro, Saturday, 20 December 2008 02:10 (Yesterday) Permalink

what an awful thing to say

"Hyper-Ballad" is probably my favorite Bjork track.

― Spencer Chow, Friday, December 19, 2008 11:52 AM Bookmark

― USICMAKEULOSECONTROL (The Reverend), viernes 19 de diciembre de 2008 14:01 (2 days ago)

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

"Enjoy", I think. Almost all of the rest of these tracks (as good as they were) were improved upon by their remixes. Actually I guess "Army of Me" wasn't.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Played this last night for the first time in years; Army Of me is fucking AWESOME through big speakers. Great record.

That's the one track that I still don't ever play off of this album.

How come?

there was a björk concert available to watch on the plane back from canada last week - first time i'd heard "army of me" in a while and that groove is pretty fucking amazing, right? started raving in my seat

Yeah, it's fucking monstrous.

i also really approve of the song's sentiment

SELF-SUFFICIENCY PLEASE
AND GET TO WORK

AND GET OFF FACEBOOK!!

Strangely Norman Tebbitesque lyrics to that song but it kicked her Glastonbury set into gear - lasers!

"Army of Me" is a click too slow for me, edging the beat from being menacing into just being plodding and stodgy. I also think the transition from "Army of Me" to "Hyper-Ballad" is the weak link on the album where the end of a song doesn't accurately set you up for the beginning of the next one.

http://devonrecordclub.wordpress.com/2012/05/23/bjork-post-round-28-nicks-choice/

what's a "playback version on a carnival show"?

"army of me" is incredible, both as a song and as a thing to listen to when you need to be jolted out of moping around and feeling sorry for yourself. i think this song has helped people.

More a song I'd rather play for other people than myself.

Also, "sex without touching" sounds a lot less menacing now than it did in '95.

i think it's useful. i have an easier time taking tough love advice from bjork than i do people i actually know. "the modern things" should have won this poll though. when she starts singing in icelandic it's the most beautiful thing on the record.

I miss pissing off people in my car with this one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ur1RBKNfdCk

I think I took my summer car trips with the wrong people in high school.

Problem is, I still actually want to meet an army of Bjork.

me too, but i'd want them to like/approve of me

You're probably right.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lhgiuTFxxM

"the modern things" should have won this poll though. when she starts singing in icelandic it's the most beautiful thing on the record.

― tɹi.ʃɪp (Treeship), Wednesday, January 22, 2014 1:12 AM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Agree with this.

Apparently I was one of the the 3 that voted for it, so I do too.

It's odd that this is only my fourth or fifth favorite Bjork album, since it was so intimately connected with what now seems like the happiest time of my life.

there are very few moments in life as good as this

sometimes Life's Too Good

xp I detest cheap sentiment.

http://68.media.tumblr.com/d26e0176716ccb8ce067e5ded6f59649/tumblr_o8sj4a37Q21r4514so4_500.jpg
http://68.media.tumblr.com/0051390da99f7e64c1c9aa3500edb297/tumblr_o8sj4a37Q21r4514so1_500.jpg
http://68.media.tumblr.com/58d59fc52a31cd80e4c30fe2ee9a4621/tumblr_o8sj4a37Q21r4514so2_500.jpg
http://68.media.tumblr.com/5be56f21ef83705f9ca675c9c9348e98/tumblr_o8sj4a37Q21r4514so3_500.jpg

I'm very curious about the songwriting/production arrangements on this album. Apparently "Army of Me" and "The Modern Things" were initially recorded before Debut, but they sound very much "of a piece" (if anything on this album can be described in those terms) with the other electronic tracks sonically, sort of sitting halfway between the Nellee co-productions and "Enjoy". The production credits suggest that maybe Bjork built the bones of those songs with Graham Massey and then retouched them with Nellee Hooper?

The funny thing is that songwriting-wise there's nothing like those two tracks on Debut, and the other Nellee co-productions on Post ("Hyper-Ballad", "Isobel", "Possibly Maybe"), which I think Bjork wrote by herself, all follow Debut's relatively more conventional song template (the album's "Violently Happy", "Aeroplane" and "Venus As A Boy" respectively, perhaps).

So it's almost as if what changed when Bjork collaborated was not so much the production sound as the songwriting approach, though in this case it's more the collaborator sparking something out of Bjork that was there, given there's no way you could conceive of (say) "The Modern Things" as the product of any other musician.

by the way I once did a playback version of It's Oh So Quiet on a carnival show, dressed up as Sonic the Hedgehog. I'm not kidding. One of the best thing I ever did in my life ;)

― Ludo, Friday, December 19, 2008 3:35 PM (seven years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

what's a "playback version on a carnival show"?

― how's life, Wednesday, May 23, 2012 6:45 AM (four years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the start-stop sampled drums thing has been done so many times, but has it ever been done better and more subtly than in "Modern Things"?

I'm with Dan on this being better than Debut, but my Debut-hate has been well documented on other Björk threads.
― Eric H., Friday, December 19, 2008 1:30 PM (eight years ago)

God, that was NAGL. Glad I got right in the head.

I can't really describe why this album works better for me than other Bjork albums. I like her use of English on this album, it still feels tentative, carefully ironed. By "Homogenic" she's daring to sing "I'm going hunting / I'm the hunter" and "State of emergency / how beautiful to be / state of emergency / is where I want to be" and "I'm no fucking Buddhist, but this is enlightenment" and if that's the lyrical content of the song I am actually listening to right now? then I am not moved so much

Debut has a strong-as-anything A-side but the B-side loses me and "Violently Happy" was never my beer

Vespertine I can't remember anything about aside from "Cocoon" for being maybe her best-ever song, and "An Echo, A Stain" for doing some kind of amazing harmonic thing that I was always blown away by when it came out (and then realized it would make up a large chunk of her subsequent post-Valgeir sonic style, i.e. the middle section of Biophilia)

I'd probably rate Vulnicura as her 2nd best, Debut after that, then Biophilia because I think it's better than anybody else thinks it is, then Homogenic, Medulla, Vespertine, and I don't like Volta

Army Of Me is just incredible lyrical sentiment and is useful to anybody who is into music theory as being the most conspicuous use of Locrian mode in a song

Hyper-Ballad cannot be praised highly enough it's not just her best song it's THE best song, the tug-of-war between comfort and adventure, the sky-scraping chorus melody, the fact that the kick enters like just as an afterthought, and a string arrangement that is iconic

Modern Things was never my favourite

It's Oh So Quiet was redeemed by the Spike Jonze video

There's an "Enjoy" on every Bjork album but "Enjoy" is the best example of her Atari Teenage Riot vibe

You've Been Flirting Again is really necessary and perfectly executed and shouldn't be slept on, it's The Anchor Song of this album imo, and having a "new music-y" kind of moment works better as an interlude than as a coda imo

Isobel used to annoy me for "My name Isobel" until I realized it was meant to be a pun, this is Deodato's song though

Possibly Maybe is too long but otherwise perfect and the video is crazy

I Miss You never hit me but I love the trumpet at the end

Cover Me has a good lyric but otherwise keep it

Headphones, I don't really know how to describe this effectively but it's like they sent the masterer out for a coffee and made this blast open your stereo and rattle your bones, I felt like this was maybe a subconscious response in the Bass Wars to "Wandering Star", designed for anybody with a sub in their trunk

idk it's as perfect an album as I've ever heard, I love Bjork when she's eclectic

That makes me want to do my own version of that post, on Post and all the rest.