…I’m thinking about having watched the Björk concert last night on Apple TV. Filmed, I think, within the last year, it was a live performance of mostly material from her Utopia album, the album preceding her most recent project, Fossora. It was a fascinating experience, and while it was not entirely pleasant, I could not stop watching and listening for the entire hour and thirteen. I’ve been a fan since I first learned about her as the lead singer of an 80’s Icelandic band called The Sugarcubes. They only made three albums, arguably great albums, before Björk decided to fly solo. And I kept following her into the 90’s and then more irregularly as she moved forward into the twentieth century. I think I began to lose interest–perhaps that’s the wrong phrase, because I find it difficult not to be interested in her. In my estimation she is one of the most uniquely gifted and most visionary pop stars of my generation. So I didn’t lose interest in her as an artist, but in her music. The further it got away from recognizable pop song structure, the less engaged I became. I could appreciate and respect what she was doing; I just didn’t think I liked it all that much. I did buy the last album, Fossora, but I think I listened to it all of about three or four times. The experience of watching the Cornucopia concert last night reminded me about why I’m no longer listening to Björk on repeat. The spectacle of the show, visually, was fantastic–such a complex display of lights and image and costumery–the whole thing had absolutely an otherworldly vibe. Instrumentally strange, the band consisted of a percussionist, a keyboardist, a small army of flautists, and occasionally a choir. I may remember this incorrectly, but I think the Utopia album featured flutes almost exclusively, and that’s one of the things that makes Björk fascinating and challenging. She just says, I want to make an album consisting totally of mouth sounds, or in this case, let’s make an album with a half a dozen flutes. Don’t get me wrong; I have nothing against flutes, and in this show they were marvelously performed and sonically beautiful and weirdly un-flute-like. And even though Björk’s singing sounded as forceful and spot-on as it ever has, her music feels meandering to me. Clearly, there are parts, structural aspects to the music, the arrangements move from one thing to another thing, but it is often difficult to discern what might be identified as a chorus, for example, and her style of singing, I find, does not lend itself to the listener being able to understand the words, and melodically, more often than not, it drones around a small number of notes, kind of chant like. So, I immerse myself, absorb as much as I can of the visual, find myself looking closely at the various musicians, especially the drummer, trying to figure out what the hell they’re doing, and the music just kind of washes over me. I couldn’t name a single tune. I couldn’t hum along. If my life depended on it, I couldn’t remember a single melodic line or lyric. I don’t blame Björk for any of this. I know that it’s my limitations as a listener that keep me from fully appreciating her work. I think, in order to come to a better understanding, I’d have to watch this film again and again. I don’t think I will do that. But my disappointment in the concert, at least musically, didn’t keep me from watching an hour long accompanying AppleTV interview with her on YouTube. I couldn’t help myself. I am fascinated by her strangeness, impressed by her adventurous spirit and intelligence, and will probably keep listening to her in large part because of these things, and not because I love her music. I’d love nothing more for her to turn around and make another rock album. Somehow I doubt that she will do that.
It’s astounding to me that I’ve written a blog essay thirty days in a row. I think it’s safe to say that tomorrow I will reach the goal of writing every day in the month of January. Today, I read a number of pages in James, did some band business, tried and failed to stay away from the news regarding the hearings around Trump’s cabinet picks, the horrific plane crash in DC, and the president’s equally horrific response to it, I cooked some dinner, and I wrote this blog. I’m streaming Björk’s Utopia right now, a record I’m not sure that I have ever heard from start to finish. And like the concert film I watched last night, it’s fascinating, unquestionably good at what it does, but also not a thing I can see myself returning to. I just heard her sing the word “Kafkaesque.” Appropriately. I notice that most of these tunes are in collaboration with someone named ARCA. I’m looking into that now, and it is, unsurprisingly, just as weird, if not more so.
michael jarmer 