Björk I Love You

[jazzy_dave]

Two tracks from the wonderful pixie like Björk from her latest album. All shot on location in Iceland.

Stonemilker

Black Lake

Comments

[calico-pye.livejournal.com]

I like Stonemilker - haven't had the chance to listen to the album and I downloaded it months ago.

[penpusher.livejournal.com]

"Stonemilker" has a definite "All Is Full of Love" sound to it, and "Black Lake" reminds me of a slightly slowed down "Hyperballad." Not bad, but it doesn't feel like a new direction for the Elfin Icelandic Chanteuse.

How I got to LJ as my choice for a blog site (even before that term existed) is one story, but how it got cemented as my internet home was due, at least in part, to Björk! Many of the people at the bjork.com website's message board, labled the 4um, were El Jay users, so it was natural for me to post stuff about her here and link it back to the board there. There were a couple of events that I posted, a listening party for Vespertine and the Radio City Music Hall performance after 9/11 that fell into that.

I think a lot of us got a bit lost with the direction she was going in, maybe 10 years or so ago, and we just stopped trying. I would say Tori Amos also had similar issues with the work she was producing, for whatever reason. Björk is all about the challenge though. She challenges herself and her audience and that seems to be even more true now than it was back in her Post and Homogenic years... Is she trying to go back to that sort of material with this? Is she trying to reconnect with the her of then and find new avenues and elements that she might have missed the first time? Or is she just attempting to do something that succeeded previously, a sort of career encore?

I think what's missing here is a single word: energy. Yes, Björk is older now, she has a very grown up son and she has been through a lot of ups and downs throughout her remarkable career. Maybe she's just a little melancholic at this stage. But even when she would perform something a little bit more moody like "Big Time Sensuality" or "New World" (which I thought should have been the "Best Song" nominee from "Dancer In the Dark" and not "I've Seen It All") there was that underlying energy to bolster the vocals and capture those feelings. I feel like maybe she's a bit tired, either of the process or of the effort, and that makes me a little bit sad.

The last album of hers that I purchased was Medulla. That was nearly 12 years ago... and I think I listened to it exactly twice, without loading any of the tracks onto my iTunes. I suppose I'll give this new disc a try, and thanks for pointing out these very innovative videos! I still remember watching Matt Pinfield hosting 120 Minutes on some random summer Sunday night on MTV and being startled, stunned and stupefied by "Hit," the video he played by The Sugarcubes, and I just had to know who that girl singer was with the band. Yeah. I guess I'm still a fan.

[thespian15.livejournal.com]

I can never decide if I like Bjork or not. :p
Hugs, Jon

[a-phoenixdragon.livejournal.com]

*HUGS*