The choppy, rocky Bitch Magnet’s second album, Umber (1989) is a fantastic lesson in post-hardcore/pre-emo rockmanship. Guitars that sound like they’re trying to writhe out of the players grip and time signatures that seemingly switch at will make for a gripping record of quite unusual smarts. The occasional quieter moments only serve to underscore the drama of the more intense numbers and in many ways Bitch Magnet distilled a lot of the more bombastic stuff going on in the indie-rock world at the time and stripped away the nonsense, leaving something like a harder, more considered version of Squirrelbait with the punk taken out. In any event, Umber is a fine album.
Well alright, deep breath, it’s time for another marathon. We kick off with an eponymous debut album from 1977, made when the artist in question was all of twelve years old. Now, I know Stevie Wonder was twelve when he made his first album, but to be frank while Stevie Wonder wrote some great pop songs over the years he certainly never grew up to be the artistic powerhouse that Bjork has become. Not that you would have any clue from the album Bjork. This is a bizarre piece of work, clearly conceived and designed in the calculating minds of some label managers and producers who thought a cutesy kid might sell a few records. Although it’s hardly kiddie fare, it’s a markedly odd record, sometimes seemingly trying to blend a kind of nursery rhyme type of melodic structure to discofied mock-Arabian music and at other times sounding like a theme tune to some weird European children’s cartoon. It’s basically rubbish and of course Bjork’s voice is not the soaring, swooping thing we know it to be today, it’s the voice of a twelve year old girl. Still, the whole thing is a fascinating curio. As is the next record to be released under her own name (actually under the name Bjork Gudmonsdottir and Trio Gudmundar Ingolfsonnar, but I can’t be bothered to quibble about it so it’s coming under the Bjork section), Gling-Glo (1990). After her debut solo Bjork spent the next few years in various punk and rock bands (including the Sugarcubes of course), but in the downtime following the panning that the second Sugarcubes album received, she got together with some old-fashioned jazzers and recorded Gling-Glo in two days. It’s a lovely and surprisingly successful fusion of traditional Icelandic songs and trad tunes all performed in a straight and unchallenging classical jazz fashion with Bjork’s voice in full throat. The whole record sounds like everyone involved was having a great time, and it becomes clear why she decided to record ‘It’s Oh So Quiet’ later in her career, as this whole album is like a more relaxed, sunny, traditionally jazzy and cheerful (and less annoying) version of that recording. With the sole exception of that one song, there is nothing else like it anywhere in Bjork’s other work and although it’s an unexpected anomaly, it’s a really lovely one.
After one more moderately successful Sugarcubes album the band called it quits and Bjork started work on her “real debut” solo album. Debut (1993) is a record that personally I never quite understood. I certainly never saw why everyone had gone quite so nuts about it, and I have never been much of a fan of the kind of club beats that are utilised throughout it. I think that ‘Violently Happy’ and ‘Big Time Sensuality’ are easily the weakest points on the whole record and there are some much more interesting and better songs on it. Listening to the whole thing now it sounds so much better than it did at the time. The audacity of it all seems much clearer now and with the exception of the slightly dated house stylings, if it were released today it would still seem like a remarkable and unusual record. There’s just so much going on in it, from the volume drop out and old-style brass samples in ‘There’s More To Life Than This’ to the . The songs that got the least notice at the time seem to have become the real stunners: ‘Crying’ is a fantastic pop song, better than any of the singles, ‘Life Someone in Love’ as a vocal and harp combo was incredibly daring and is absolutely beautiful and ‘One Day’ is spectacularly sensual. Follow-up Post (1995) is in my opinion the weakest of her albums (and that’s a back-handed compliment because I think her worst is better than most people’s best). There aren’t enough songs or ideas to really get you pulled in on Post, and although it has two of the best songs she ever wrote (‘Hyperballad’ and ‘Isobel’) the rest isn’t quite strong enough. ‘The Modern Things’ and ‘Enjoy’ drift by without making their presence felt and the completely inappropriate inclusion of ‘It’s Oh So Quiet’ breaks what flow the album has drastically. It all starts so superbly as well with ‘Army of Me’s driving, crunching rhythm, followed by the absolutely breathtaking ‘Hyperballad’ (whose lyrics I think are some of the most moving ever written, and the whole song demonstrates just how far above “pop” music she really works even when she’s writing “pop” songs). The rest of the album can’t hope to live up though, and it works best when it sounds like even the album itself is in agreement and can relax (‘Possibly Maybe’ sounds like a sigh of relief).
1997’s Homogenic was a considerable step up. Although ostensibly similar in tone and structure, the songs are much stronger on Homogenic than on Post and the album feels much more confident and sure of its own artistry. Where Post often felt like there was a hesitation in being experimental, Homogenic throws that caution entirely to the wind (listen to the jabbing noises and distorted vocal howls at the end of ‘Pluto’ for instance), and the programming, sampling and live instrumentation blend absolutely seamlessly this time around. The songs themselves are fabulous, moving from the stridently aggressive to stunningly graceful and in ‘Bachelorette’ and ‘All Neon Like’, there are two more of her absolute highlights. Where Post felt like a succession of potential dead-ends, Homogenic is full of cues as to where she could and would take it all next. Taking a break from recording to star in Lars von Trier’s audience baiting film Dancer in the Dark, it wasn’t until filming was nearly over that he asked her to record some songs for the film and the result was the mini-LP Selmasongs (2000). This is an interesting but slightly difficult record in that it’s not easy to love despite not containing anything particularly challenging. The songs seem to be designed to match each other rhythmically rather than melodically (to match the rhythms of the factory and the railway line that Bjork’s character in the film increasingly notices as she goes blind) and although they are propulsive, it’s hard to catch on to the tune in the songs. They sweep and swoon and skitter about, and they are incredibly intricately pieced together, but somehow something just doesn’t quite work. In some ways it’s the first sign that her work would occasionally be too clever to really fall in love with.
And so finally for today on to one of the best records ever made, certainly one of the purest, and one of the most perfect. Everything about it is glorious, sensuous, from the cover onwards. For a record composed and recorded almost entirely via a laptop and made up of spacious and glacial atmospheres it's a miracle that it's so warm. It's entirely down to Bjork herself, her voice, her style of songwriting, this is all inclusive, inviting, yet utterly personal (clearly to her, but also to the listener). It is simply magical and every time I listen to it I'm thrilled and astonished by it all over again, and as someone who finds the world a difficult and unpleasant place to be, it makes me feel absolutely wonderful about being alive. If you can't quite tell, I really like it. No, I can't even feel comfortable joking about it, it's just a truly wonderful thing to have happened.
More Bjork tomorrow.
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