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

Yeah, "Arisen My Senses" is excellent, but after that, I feel as lost as I was with Biophilia

Excited to submit my ballot! Love the bookends of her solo career as it stands right now. Vespertine was a huge disappointment to me at the time and returning to it now I feel largely the same. Felt dispassionate and "ornate". Like she lost her spunk.

After cross referencing her bio, I just realized I just don't like much of her work that she released while married to Matthew Barney. Huh.

(they were married from 2000-2013)

Speaking of post-Barney matters, any love out there for "Notget"? Text search suggests no-one's said anything about it. The swelling strings and clickety clack makes for a particularly strong Homogenic Revisited sort of vibe methinks. Pleasingly so.

Notget/Atom Dance/Mouth Mantra is the section of Vulnicura I find totally dense and impenetrable

"Atom Dance" is one of my favourites from Vulnicura, but I think that both "Notget" and "Mouth Mantra" worked better either in strings-only arrangements or live (e.g. check out the insane Haxan Cloak version that they played live: https://soundcloud.com/bjork/mouth-mantra-the-haxan-cloak-mix-1 ). The album tracks seem to pull into many different directions at once but don't necessarily arrive at any of them.

I also absolutely adore the strings-only version of "Notget" with viola organista. It's even more dramatic and over the top when it's stripped off of Arca's beats.

https://open.spotify.com/track/38pPYrmO3HHipP5wX7qhre?si=RcrdZJ1rQkC1Ctj4Fyp50Q

I've just finished listening to everything and wanted to highlight some of the non-LP tracks I loved

Atlantic (from Human Behaviour single)
Glora (from Big Time Sensuality single)
Sweet Intuition (from Army of Me single)
Karvel (from I Miss You single)
I Go Humble (from Isobel single)
Oxygen (Evelyn Glennie featuring Björk)
Sod Off (from Joga single)
Foot Soldier (from Hidden Place single)
Domestica (from Pagan Poetry single)
Batabid (from Pagan Poetry single)
It's In Our Hands (from Greatest Hits)
Trance (from To Lee, With Love, Nick ost)
Náttúra (single, 2008)
Flétta (Antony and the Johnsons featuring Björk)

Also wanted to say that the Greatest Hits from 2002 is possibly my favourite greatest hits compilation from anyone, the tracks are so well-chosen and well-sequenced, I'm considering voting for it as my #5 album, possibly.

"Domestica" was one of the best new finds for me, as a result of this poll

I have a bunch of the B-sides but they don't have titles and it's driving me crazy, I may even post soundcloud samples to ID or something

lol wtf is the version of "alarm call" they used for the music video

I ... kind of prefer it to the album version? *doesn't duck*

oh hey eric i sent my ballot then i sent a small edit to my ballot a few hours later i think, hope that's ok!

No problem! Also, I haven't responded to everyone's emails yet, but I am up to date on entering them into my spreadsheet.

black lake really has a beautiful melody doesn't it

For all that “Black Lake” is reputed to be the dense, impenetrable, harrowing heart of Vulnicura, I find it easily the most approachable track on that album.

I'm very much a casual Bjork fan, I've only really experienced her through her dancefloor oriented songs and remixes in the 90s/00s and the singles. But I've been playing all the album tracks on shuffle for the past few days and it's been a very, very entertaining journey.

“family” is way more qualified to be the dense, impenetrable, harrowing heart (and even then said heart is full of empty space so the bass can shudder through it)

Listening to Life’s Too Good for the first time in ages, and it’s easy to see how/why “Birthday” hit the UK indie community like a bomb. It really feels simultaneously sui generis and like it presages several years of dream-pop, The Sundays and baggy simultaneously.

The Jesus and Mary Chain remixes really underscore that point (at least vis a vis dream-pop) actually.

Funny how the rest of that album, which is very enjoyable, never quite feels like it rearticulates and reconfigures its stylistic coordinates (The Fall, The Cure, the first Happy Mondays album, the Hoodoo Gurus?) so radically.

Agreed re “Family”.

black lake is long and it's repetitive, but that melody is so primal. it feels like an ancient prayer or lamentation along the lines of kol nidrei

Notget very narrowly missed my ballot. Great song

For whatever reason Vulnicura only gets bogged down for me at "Atom Dance". Before that I point, I seem be drawn forward in anticipation of the next moment I know will move me to the verge of tears. ("Stonemilker" and "Black Lake" are particularly reliable on this front.)

I really didn't grasp that this album was quite so good before this poll. It's probably something like #3 for me now. Though alternating with the strings-only/live versions, as recommended above, is an excellent idea.

I vastly prefer Vulnicura to utopia. Way more emotionally and texturally accessible

agreed. i briefly considered posting utopia in lj's "stuff that sounds like l'rain" thread (though i didn't bc i don't have an accurate memory of what l'rain sounds like)

it's been really hard for me to pick 30 tracks

I *wish* 'Utopia' sounded like L'Rain, or Spellling, or Serpentwithfeet, or FKA Twigs, or even solo Arca...

It’s somewhat frustrating to me how little the beats coalesce on utopia. It’s like insect scattershot beats with no direction.
I think my biggest problem with the record is how Bjork rarely makes it easy for the listener. Sure she has avant- grade inclinations but I never listened to Bjork for a pure experimental experience personally. It was always the push and pull of pop and the esoteric

yeah agreed completely Ross.

Family is one track on Vulnicura that only really opened up to me recently, really fantastic and I wish I'd made room on my ballot for it now

just in case anyone else missed it, i'm glad i saw this before submitting my music videos ballot

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZM80F_J-QHE

hey eric h, can we do mixed ballots for tracks? i feel pretty confident in my ability to pick 10 favorites but not in my ability to rank all 30 tracks

That's fine. Just indicate which part is ranked and which isn't.

thanks

it's just from the wikipedia entry on vespertine, but i thought this was really interesting:

Björk decided to use instruments whose sound would not be compromised when downloaded from sites such as Napster.[16] She explained:

I use micro-beats, a lot of whispery vocals, which I think sound amazing when they're downloaded because of the secrecy of the medium. The only acoustic instruments I would use would be those that sound good after they've been downloaded, so the harp, the music box, celeste and clavichord. They're plucky sounds. [...] And the strings [...] ended up being more panoramic textures in the background. It's all about being in a little house, on your own. [...] The strings would be like white mountains outside.[16]

i always love to read how artists work within constraints, especially those that are partly self-imposed. she knew that anything she released would be listened to millions of adoring obsessive fans on headphones, an experience she clearly connects with (like on the song ... "headphones"). but she gravitated toward sounds that would also still sound good after being compressed down to a mp3! and not just any mp3, but a typical turn of the millienium mp3, so probably like 96 or 128 kbps. i love it

ok, finally voted! that was a ridiculous ballot. really, most of the top 20 is pretty interchangeable for me. sometimes i'm having a post kind of day, sometimes it's a vespertine kind of day (those are nice). i can't believe a song like "big time sensuality" didn't even make it, but that's how solid her catalog is. <3

Shameful confession: Vespertine still does nothing for me.

*gasp* i'm probably gonna vote Vespertine as my #1 album.

possibly because i've mostly been listening on earbuds (good insight, karl)

eric was right, i should've voted for "it's not up to you"

how do i master
the perfect day

There's still time imo.

the triumph of a heart
the triumph of the heart
a triumph of the heart
a triumph of a heart

Also, I can't say there's a Bjork album that does nothing for me. A couple of them antagonize me, but I'm certainly not neutral on a single one of them.

hope it's not too late to rep for these three remixes, all (as far as I know) only on whitelabels:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88HqorPJDWI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eoP6Ro_41tI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Psr9vd9lGiQ

I have now tallied 14 ballots. Still a lot of people I know who are Bjork fanatics who haven't weighed in yet!

Oh, and here's where I ask if there's someone out there who feels like designing a tile template for the reveal thread?

“Pagan Poetry” isn’t just one of Bjork’s very best songs, it’s also the last time (with the possible exception of the chorus to “Mutual Core”) where I think “no one else could do with this melody what Bjork does”. There are strong melodies later (though fewer than before of course) and there are some amazing vocal runs, but the two don’t tend to be so mutually reinforcing thereafter.

Like, the way she leans into the first word of the chorus so aggressively, like she’s pushing though something painful to get to something beautiful - who else could pull it off? Who would dare try to cover it?

c.f. the “pop” songs on Medulla, where typically Bjork feels like she’s actually backgrounding her lead vocal more than usual even if she’s delivering a memorable chorus line - if not in terms of volume or prominence, then in terms of style and flair - as if dominating the track like she would have previously kind of defeats the purpose of the whole exercise.

Conversely the big vocal moments later on rarely combine with indelible melodies.

Well these Greek guys tried to cover it:

https://youtu.be/DSfXZ5rkCNQ

Just tallied the most idiosyncratic ballot so far. Up to 15.

Hopefully it’ll make up for my bound-to-be-boring one.

great post, tim f

when you talk about her "vocal runs" and "big vocal moments" as something distinct from the melodies, do you mean just in terms of loudness and prominence in the song, or technical virtuosity, or something else?

"Like, the way she leans into the first word of the chorus [of Pagan Poetry] so aggressively, like she’s pushing though something painful to get to something beautiful"

so otm. this ballot was painful to put together. i put pagan poetry below two other vespertine songs! (but how are you going to put any above "Undo"... so agonizing)