Medulla - review

It’s been a rough patch for me and Bjork recently. She firmly established herself as one of my favorite artists after her first brilliant three albums, culminating in her third classic Homogenic- which I think will probably always remain my favorite. I survived many attempts at dislodging my respect for her along the way, but the fact that she is an individual always spoke louder than anything else. But this is a rocky patch. I thought her last album Vespertine was tired, dare I say it, corny - full of a few too many ‘happy emotional climaxes’ that didn’t move me that much, whilst she left out a few brilliant songs like 'Our Hands' and most criminally 'Generous Palmstroke'. After that, she hired some supposedly respectable directors to make videos for her great songs, ‘Hidden Place’, ‘Cocoon’ and ‘Pagan Poetry’, however the only creative ideas those directors seemed to have were removing Bjork’s clothes (Oh I’m so shocked!) Piercing her skin (Ooh controversial!) And playing around with digital computer effects. It seemed as if a bigger deal was being made about the ‘trendy’ people she worked with and the music took a side-stage, and worst of all was that Bjork seemed to be fine with that. After this came a promotional onslaught of live and unnecessary box-set and ‘greatest hits’ collections that- as one writer noted- seemed to be done for the sole purpose of milking her dedicated fans out of ever last penny they had. Needless to say I didn't make any such purchases on those things. As this album proves (if it ever needed proving), to release a greatest hits album whilst your still making good music is utterly pointless.

So you’ll forgive me if I don’t get swept up in the hype of Medulla like that young naive fan of any artist who sits wide-eyed and inhales all the publicity with delight, affirmation and merriment. This album is good. I mostly disliked it at first, then I found ways to theoretically criticize it, but now I think it’s an emotionally resonant and interesting collection of movements, pieces. Sure, the name Medulla has a meaning referring to the essences of natural organisms, and this album is almost entirely A Capella and without instruments, but as other writers have rightly noted, this is essentially an electronic album. Those programmers get to work on every human beat-box and every choir, manipulating and screwing around with every natural sound except for Bjorks voice, which remains mainly untouched (obviously!)

Standouts include ‘Oceania’ ‘Who is it’ ‘Vokuro’ and ‘Desired Constellation’ but you’ll like different tracks based on your own tastes and perversions. Oceania is a brilliant piece of magic, and one occasion when the programmer’s manipulation of the choir with effects doesn’t seem excessive. It’s a very formulaic song also, once you strip away some of the more meaningless and slightly pretentiously ‘crazy’ choral sections, what you have is a very formulaic melody. There’s nothing wrong with that either. She sings such beautiful words, in such beautiful ways that I find it hard to do anything but feel good. This song also contains one of the lyrics of the year/decade/millennia: “I am why”. Just sit there and think about that for a second. Regarding the excessive use of wild choral sections though- it’s almost as if bits of ‘randomness’ are sometimes inserted into this song and the album in general just to give it more credibility with the experimental heads, or to attempt that worst of things in music; experimentalism for the sake of experimentalism.

So let’s get on to those experimental elements (because apart from ‘Oceania’ & ‘Who is it’ just about everything else is experimental). They’re effective. I mean, don’t get me wrong, this isn’t successful ‘pop’ experimentation in the way that Outkast’s ‘Stankonia’ was, but it is fairly successful experimentation within itself and it does follow its own internal logic. These are the animal-like tracks in which grunts and moans are heard. The albums brilliant (and slightly Thom Yorke-ish) opener ‘The Pleasure is all mine’ is probably the best example of this, because Bjork doesn’t completely abandon the melody; the primal human sighs of pleasure heard at the end are more of an atmospheric accompaniment as opposed to the bulk of the song itself. ‘Ancestors’ on the other hand, is 4 minutes and 8 seconds of yearning, moaning, grunting, animal growls and it generally sounds like a person dying painfully. I didn’t like it at first, but now I do. It’s intense, and it’s not made to be listened to regularly. Incidentally, if you’re familiar with vocal-led groups like the amazing Huun-Huur Tu or The Bulgarian Voices, then the animalistic qualities of the vocals on this album won’t be such a shock.

Experimentalism for its own sake seems to be most evident on ‘Where is the line’. I listened to this in my car on the way back from the record shop where I purchased this album on the stroke midnight along with a few other hardcore fans. I thought to myself, and said to my cousin at the time, ‘this is totally different!’ And it is. I thought then, like with many other albums and songs which just confused me at first, that this would make perfect sense in time, and be a new addition to my musical knowledge. But it isn’t. It doesn’t do anything of the sort; it’s just a patchwork quilt of self-indulgent crap. The same goes for ‘Oll Birtan’. Singing in your native language is all well and good, as the calm beauty of ‘Vokuro’ proves, but if she thinks making funny bird sounds and then singing self-righteously over them is ‘good’, then what can I say? We disagree a little there.

None of the cast let her down. Rahzel (who everyone seems to think is still with The Roots!?) does a great job on the beat-boxing, as does Dokaka the Japanese beat-boxer. The Icelandic choir are, well, a choir! Also the Inuit throat-singer Tagaq makes valuable contributions to the albums cohesiveness. Her cast never have let her down though. Zeena Parkins was a great harpist on Vespertine, Eimur Deodato did wonders on Post, and you can go right back to the beginning of her career to see examples of people she’s managed to work with who have made the records infinitely better. It’s this album however, that seems to show me that Bjork is not trying as hard as she used to be. Ultimately Bjork doesn’t give a damn what people think of her, that’s obvious. She is clearly settled into her own groove and lifestyle now, as anyone who checks her website will no-doubt confirm. That’s not always a good thing though.

Despite all the ‘madness’ of this LP, the randomness and experimentalism of it all, some of my favorite tracks are still the most formulaic ones; ‘Oceania’ and ‘Who is it’. We Bjork fans heard experimentation throughout 1992’s Post, but it was done with a sort of youthful exuberance, a living evolution that you could hear in her voice (and to be fair, that you can hear on two or three songs here). The cheekiness and young-life that you could hear on such tracks as ‘It’s oh so quiet’ and ‘Hyperballad’ respectively (and that’s coming from that type of Bjork fan who never even liked ‘It’s oh so quiet’) is clearly missing from most of this album. I might even say that it was missing from Vespertine too. The proof is in listening to the albums closer, ‘The Triumph of a heart’, which I knew from the title, and because it's the last track, would be Bjork’s attempt at something joyous; and it is something joyous… in theory at least. Just like the corny closing song on Vespertine, ‘Unite’, this one doesn’t move me. The chorus sounds right, she hits all the right notes, but I just don’t believe her. She doesn’t sound any different over that fast-exciting hip-hop style up-tempo beat, singing in the exact same tempo as she does on the rest of the album, unmoved. Clarity is there, but the excitement doesn’t seem to be. This also says a lot to me about the Bjork in general. I don’t want her to start becoming like Madonna; meaning someone who relies totally on ‘cool’ producers and extends little effort herself in the actual music. Bjork is infinitely, a billion times more talented than that, but recently she has just seemed a little too comfortable, grabbing a hold of a cool musical cast and crew and getting them to do all the crazy experimental stuff that gives a record its ‘identity’ whilst she just sings in exactly the same way as if she wasn’t really moved at all or changed by it at all. This is all theoretical criticism, because much of her music does still sound good, but if you hear a song like ‘So Broken’ a B-side from the Homogenic-era, you will notice that the flamenco guitar sounds amazing, and you can’t wait for Bjork to join in and do something exciting, or even, dare I say it, Latin-tinged, but she doesn’t do anything different from what we’ve heard before. She sings in exactly the same way she always does. This album is the same, her voice and the same notes and tempo she maintains is beginning to sound… boring. Bjork… boring? Yes.

I find myself shocked that I’m criticizing an artist I admire as much as Bjork. But I am. She just seems a little too comfortable these days (that’s not a crime for any human being not least a mature woman.. but!) Comfort as we all know, is a killer for musicians. Stevie Wonder is still alive, I’d still consider him to be a young man, and it’s not as if his voice has stopped working, but he just doesn’t make music anymore. I feel quite affectionate towards Bjork. The way she says “repeatedly” (without the cheesy vocal-filter) on ‘Desired Constellation’ makes me feel all warm inside. This is a good record, but Bjork needs to stop bragging about her ‘artist-friends’ as she seems to be doing on her website, and begin realizing that even without all those good producers and colllaborators she’d still be making amazing music. She just needs to be pushed a little more, or to get out of her comfort-zone and allow someone to push her, so that her whole style stops sounding repetitive. Otherwise she'll just decay slowly and fade into insignificance. I don't want Bjork to become irrelevant.

Y.Misdaq aka Yoshi, 8th Sep 2004