Defending Volta

I can think of no greater burden than a reputation as a forward-thinking artist. You're expected to not just reinvent the wheel, but dream up entirely new modes of transportation with every artistic statement. How exhausting and stressful it must be when minor triumphs and subtle ideas are branded failures and relegated to wither in the shade of your prior BIG. IMPORTANT. STATEMENTS. I suppose fine artists can get away with whatever they want -- even if whatever they release receives less praise or makes less money than what preceded it, they can always rest assured that they just went over people's heads. It's an occupational hazard. It's not the same for pop artists, though, whose craft necessarily involves engaging people. I wrote about the decreasingly futuristic Timbaland's plight in this regard, and I'll be damned if, a month later, virtually the same pity applies to Björk, who just happens to have collaborated with Tim on three tracks on her unenthusiastically received new album, Volta (even the positive reviews, by and large, seem disappointed).

I see Timbaland increasingly dwarfed by his past achievements -- his reliance on grinding his new sounds into the ground makes him seem something like this decade's answer to Babyface (albeit with a cyborg's eye). That Björk "edit[ed] the fuck out of" his contributions to Volta doesn't say much about his capacity for forward thinking in 2007 (at least, they didn't pass the approval of pop artist avant enough to have never made the U.S. Top 40, despite her status as a household name). But then, Volta doesn't say much about Björk's capacity for forward-thinking, either. Not that that's a huge surprise, really -- she hasn't been inventive on an album-wide scale since 1997's Homogenic. 2001's Vespertine, while reliably gorgeous and novel in its marriage of unabashedly heart-tugging strings and frigidly clipped beats, was more a reflection of the IDM craze of the time than a milestone achievement. 2005's Medúlla made a swap meet out of her ideas in its substitution of synth-spun sounds for mouth-spun ones -- when it was good, it was good despite its cords-only setup and even then, the high points still would have hit higher had she remembered her place and let the pop songs be pop songs (excepted is album's highlight for me, "Desired Constellation," but that's a weird one anyway, as it includes a synth, bizarrely sidestepping the album's thematic constraints or maybe not). Her work on the score of Drawing Restraint 9 was even more obtuse, enough to make Matthew Barney's accompanying 2-hour blubber fest feel light by comparison.

And, so, it would seem that the future caught up with the alien girl from Iceland who's responsible for three of the most exciting pop records of all time (her first three: Debut, Post and Homogenic). Instead of fighting what amounts to aging, Björk is, for the first time, seemingly thumbing her nose at the convention of forward-thinking all together. On Volta, she is splashing in the streams of her memory, like the hyperactive swanwoman that she is. On the surface, Volta is a cognate of Homogenic: the skeleton of Homogenic consisted of an eight-piece string section and Mark Bell's distorted beats, while the skeleton of Volta is made up of a 10-piece brass section and...Mark Bell's distorted beats. But, even further, Volta's individual songs are littered with references spanning Björk's entire career. The mud-sloppy vocal melody of "Earth Intruders" recalls Björk's almost free-form yowling with the Sugarcubes, specifically "Regina" (how appropriate for a track about the return to primitive humanity). "Wanderlust" marries the skittery breaks of "Hyper-ballad" with the virgin-snow stomp of "5 Years." "Innocence" is "Alarm Call" in Sean Jean. The train of "I've Seen It All" passes through "Vertebrae By Vertebrae," which also includes the line "Please release this pressure off me," which should remind everyone of "Pluto" ("Explode this body off me"), which is again referenced in the digitally hardcore 4/4 stomp of "Declare Independence." And and and!!!

Annnnnd, Volta even folds back on itself -- the marching of "Earth Intruders" traverses "The Dull Flame of Desire" and "Vertebrae" (both literally marches, per their percussion). Colonists populate "Intruders" and threaten "Independence." Meanwhile, is the beast with many heads in "Intruders" the same one that's on four legs in "Vertebrae?" Probably! (For even more references that I didn't detect, check Xenu's comment in that Idolator post.)

My favorite Volta track, "The Dull Flame of Desire," a duet with the peanut-butter throated Antony Hegarty, uses the template of "You've Been Flirting Again" (a few lines repeated with mounting intensity) to smolder until Brian Chippendale's drums, which also intensify over the track's eight minutes, finally ignite at the conclusion. Get it: "Flame," ignite? It might be hokey, but when those drums take-off, creating what Pitchfork's Brandon Stosuy ingeniously dubs a "maniacal one-man drum circle," it's the most transcendent piece of music I've heard all year. Similarly, the sentiment at the core of the endearing IDM throwback (oooh -- simultaneously rhythmic and melodic keyboards...how Warp-ed!) "I See Who You Are," goes: "Later this century / When you and I have become corpses / Let's celebrate now all this flesh / On our bones / Let me push you up against me tightly / And enjoy every bit of you." I feel like if I had a greater knowledge of poetry, I would recognize this imagery/idea from half a million different sources, some legit, some student-spawed. But I don't so I can't, and even if I know in my heart that this is at least cheesy if not completely trite, I dig it. I dig existential reasons for showing affection. Moreover I dig Björk getting trite. It's a welcome break from the red-carpet egg dropping and the dress eating and the tit tentacles and the proclamations (visual and verbal) of being a polar bear and/or an umbrella. Here, I get the feeling that Björk is increasingly less afraid of being clichéd, which is to say that she's increasingly less afraid of being human.

And that's a wonderful thing to embrace, for as much joy as Björk has brought me over the past 16 years, I've felt her flaws were as integral to her work as her triumphs. I'm sure this is an unpopular opinion, but in my estimation, there's never been a consistent great Björk album (even on the album in which she hit her highest heights, Homogenic, there's the out-of-place "Alarm Call," that shitty ambient version of "All Is Full of Love" and "Bachelorette," which I know people love, but it just sounds like a 4-minute telenovela to me). Volta, too, is spotty (Track 7 "Pnemonia" drags the album into a stupor). But for the first time in 10 years, I can actually say I love a Björk album, flaws and all. I love Volta even though it took me a straight week of daily listens to get used to this album full of blunt and brutal melodies -- I think maybe many people just don't have the patience for that, especially when (and it can never be said enough), Björk works in the field of pop, where immediacy is a virtue.

Maybe, too, people don't have patience for backpedaling. In "Innocence," Björk, who's been known to be as child-like as she is futuristic, busts out a Mary J. Blige-esque caveat: "Untouchable innocence / It's still here / But in different places." Don't worry, everyone: she might be over 40, but she can still have fun. In other words: yes, more drama. But, be ready, be ready to get confused, for "Wanderlust," which I can't interpret in any other way but as direct commentary on her work process ("Restless relentlessly!"), contains the lines: "I have lost my origin / And I don't want to find it again." And yet, it pops up, like it or not, again and again, even as she goes hunting for mystery, rading cultures for her sound (a pípá here, some Tyutchev verse there and tribal drumming everywhere). Volta has been dubbed her "world music" record, but really, the only world Björk is visiting is her own little one.

And what a world it is! Even if Björk really is just running in circles here, I hope she never stops her wandering.

Comments

[Leanne]

I have to be honest and admit I hate your music posts the most Rich. Not because they're not thought out or eloquent, it's because most of the music I would never listen to, I don't have an MP3 player to download any of the songs to see if I like them, and because of work I only have time to finally hear an album months after it comes out. Hence I'm just hearing Amy Winehouse even though I read about her in Rolling Stone a month ago.

Sorry. Still love you.

[Adam Durand]

Dull Flame of Desire is a classic. The highlight of the album.
Wonderful review, Rich!

[shannon]

hey rich, i have to say i don't necessarily agree with all of your opinions, but i love reading your detailed analysis.

with both volta and tori's american doll posse, i have to admit the past two weeks of new music which i have been looking forward to for a LONG time have really disappointed me.

it's not that i don't hate either of the albums, its just not what i expected. i did really like your point of how exhausting and terrifying it must be for a musician with such a following to live up to their past album after album.

with volta, there are a few things i kind of like, but overall i'm just not excited by it. in fact after forcing myself to listen to it all the way through i couldn't deal, and took it out and put in post. my question is do you think it has more to do with us (or me maybe) as listeners who connect with the old songs that are loved so dearly not giving the new material a chance or is it that artists evolve and can't be kept in a neat and tidy (albeit quirky) army-of-me-hyperballad-human-behaviour-joga box? or is it something else?

i really REALLY wanted to like "dull falmes of desire" but it was SO REPETETIVE (duh, that's the point... BUT) i was just left wanting... more. am i selfish?

btw, my bff and i are going to be in nyc this weekend, so if you see two psychos running toward you and/or stalking you, don't worry. it's just two crazy kids from b'more. :)

[James]

did you see her in NYC? i was at the united palace show (the one that was also broadcast on NPR) and i had the perfect mix of old and new and she was filled with so much raw emotion and vocal power i was covered in chills and goosebumps. i flew in from chicago just to see her because i can't see her here (saying i'm a big fan would be an understatement).

i'm glad someone is defending volta. just like with almost all of her albums, they (usually) get better upon repeated listens and become soundtracks to my life at that time. i was very curious to see what you would say about this living legend and you didn't disappoint - wait you don't like bachelorette???!! oh well, you're still amazing in my eyes.

at least she didn't make an album full of "ancestors." ugh.

also, when natasha cuddled with her phone last night on ANTM and the other girls wondered what planet she was from, i caught a glimpse of ms. gudmundsdottir. natasha for president!

[Andrew]

Excellent. I just wandered over here to see if you've posted anything on Volta yet, and here it is.

I agree tremendously, for the most part. Volta is a very, very good album, and I think people are kind of getting far too caught up in what they're looking for in a "BJÖRK ALBUM!!!" to enjoy it. And the tirades against its "non-cohesion" bewilder me when there's also, you know, Post. I think Volta's all-over-the-placeness works just as beautifully, and the recurring marching, watery, ship-horn themes tie it all together in a way that might have so easily been silly but really is quite, quite nice. Declare Indepedence might be Volta's "Alarm Call" in terms of unity-disruption, but... omg so much better.

By the way: apparently the glitchy synths in Desired Constellation are still Björk's voice, just edited all to hell. Björk didn't know that and played around with a ton of choral arrangements, they didn't work, she gave up and said that the all-vocal concept was nice and all but the song had no choice but to be there with the synth, and then Olivier Alary of Ensemble who made the backdrop told her that it was her voice in the first place and didn't want to tell her because she might have been weirded out. And Björk of course was all "WHY DIDN'T YOU TELL ME? I WANT THE CHILD EMPRESS." And the rest is histöry!

Hahaha tit-tentacles. (Brit-tit-tit-tentacles? Dare I ask you to photoshop together her candy/ice cream photoshoot and the Cocoon video?)

[Rich]

Good to know about "Constellation." That song fucking possessed me when I heard it in 5.1. Fucking gorgeous.

[Eric]

that shitty ambient version of "All Is Full of Love"

Wrong.

Maybe it's because I'm sort of a recent Björk fan and I haven't been there for all the albums as they came out (I just sort of pieced them all together song-by-song in the past half a year instead) but I like Volta a lot and really don't get why so many people are disappointed with it. It's at the very, very least on par with all her past albums. Pneumonia is probably the lowest point on the album which makes me sad because it was reportedly inspired by Pan's Labyrith which is deffo one of my favorite movies. Besides that I like the other songs in various ways; Declare Independence is probably my favorite in its loud, stompy freneticism.

[mariaaaaa]

Goldangit, Rhapsody's got Volta on For Sale Only. Not that I won't buy it eventually, I just want to listen to it NOW. I've lost touch with Bjork, but I'm excited to reconnect with Volta. Debut is permanently etched into my brain/heart/soul. Listening to something 80,000 times will do that to you.

[Tauwan]

"...I love Volta even though it took me a straight week of daily listens to get used to this album full of blunt and brutal melodies -- I think maybe many people just don't have the patience for that, especially when (and it can never be said enough), Björk works in the field of pop, where immediacy is a virtue."

YES! YES! YES! Very lovely post man! I dig it.

http://lastnightadjsavemylife.blogspot.com/2007/05/all-is-full-of-love.html

[BlackRaspberry]

I think Bjork albums are a lot like people -- there are several different sides of the psyche that resonate in different ways with different people. It's what makes her work so much more affecting that what you hear on the radio. She's not pedalling a single emotion to a bunch of myopic fans in an attempt to make a fast buck. There's a degree of honesty in her music that is nearly unmatched these days. And when you read someone say something bad about "Wanderlust," (first title that popped in my head -- my personal favorite on Volta) you might go "Really?? You don't like that song??" in the same way you'd react to someone saying something about someone you just met and completely made a good impression. And it's not worth getting upset about, it's just a matter of preference. But that's what makes humanity so complex. And likewise, you may hear one of Bjork's songs and hate it out the outset and then be obessed with it five years later (again, like those people you meet and think you'll never want to be around, and then they end up one of your best friends). I think it's silly to wish Bjork a return-to-form, since her "form" has always been doing whatever the hell she wants whenever the hell she feels like doing it. Her progression as an artist has been neither linear nor circular, it's been scattershot. And that's truly impressive.

[BlackRaspberry]

I think Bjork albums are a lot like people -- there are several different sides of the psyche that resonate in different ways with different people. It's what makes her work so much more affecting that what you hear on the radio. She's not pedalling a single emotion to a bunch of myopic fans in an attempt to make a fast buck. There's a degree of honesty in her music that is nearly unmatched these days. And when you read someone say something bad about "Wanderlust," (first title that popped in my head -- my personal favorite on Volta) you might go "Really?? You don't like that song??" in the same way you'd react to someone saying something about someone you just met and completely made a good impression. And it's not worth getting upset about, it's just a matter of preference. But that's what makes humanity so complex. And likewise, you may hear one of Bjork's songs and hate it out the outset and then be obessed with it five years later (again, like those people you meet and think you'll never want to be around, and then they end up one of your best friends). I think it's silly to wish Bjork a return-to-form, since her "form" has always been doing whatever the hell she wants whenever the hell she feels like doing it. Her progression as an artist has been neither linear nor circular, it's been scattershot. And that's truly impressive.

[BlackRaspberry]

I'm really sorry that posted twice.

[Sunny Bunny]

I think a lot of the backlash against Volta stems from the pre-release hype. It was made to be her "pop" record (I know, Björk is pop to the bone, but you get what I mean), a throwback to the Debut/Post-days, fun dance music as opposed to the instrospective kick she's been on. Collabos with TIMBALAND! etc. etc. When it reality it's an extension of her work on the Drawing Restraint soundtrack, for the most part.

It isn't perfect (I'm not a fan of"Innocence" at all - there's absolutely no tune there to my ears -, "Pneumonia" is just sor of THERE, etc.), but I think Volta is a worthy addition to the Björk catalogue and I'm sure people will come to love it eventually. Really, a lot of people hated both Vespertine and Medúlla upon released and now they're both generally accepted as grea albums.

[Sunny Bunny]

(sorry for all of the typos)

[Penny Woods]

I listened to Volta via Bleep.com. I wasn't impressed by the album except for a few songs, or so I thought. I tried to listen to "Innocence" and was instantly repelled. I just can't listen to Volta any more, or at least for the moment.

Then again, I bought Medulla last year. I can't hardly listen to that album either anymore. Maybe in a few months I'll long for Volta, but for the moment I can't get into it fully.

(Side note: I'm tired of people saying they hate all the music posts in the comments section of all the music posts. How hard is it to ignore the music posts if one detests them? I mean, I thought it would be common knowledge by now...)

[spazmo]

Here was me thinking I knew a little something about Bjork (as opposed to 80% of the artists whose work you keenly analyze here), but once again, I'm left in awe of your vastly superior scholarship. Great stuff.

And I agree with your assessment of Homogenic; critics' reviews of that album quickly became giddy exercises in pretension. Sure, it had some neat tracks, but seriously, guys--put down the hyperbole before someone loses an eye.

Having said that, Rich, I adore you for this turn of phrase: "'Wanderlust' marries the skittery breaks of 'Hyper-ballad' with the virgin-snow stomp of '5 Years'."

"Virgin-snow stomp" is the perfect acoustic analogy for that song! I'll be buying Volta presently, as soon as I give Homogenic another listen (with fresh ears). Thanks Rich!

[dee]

Anthony WhatsHisFace ruins The Dull Flame of Desire for me. His fake vibrato is grating. I love Wanderlust, so. There you go.

[candice]

hi rich,

i saw the comments on idolator, too, so i'm pleased to get your take on the album, especially in light of all the criticism it's receiving.

one of the things i keep noticing in the negative reviews is that they tend to fall into two categories: either they complain volta is a bunch of ripoffs of bjork songs from previous records, or complain that she's gotten too dense and avant garde (if you'll refer back to the idolator comments, you'll see that xenu somehow manages to claim volta does both!).

whatever. i hear the internet fanboys-cum-music-bloggers complain, then read about her incendiary performance in NYC last week and am reminded that, in all likelihood, bjork doesn't really give a fuck. she's going to continue to make fun, challenging, original music — probably long after the cynics are decrying her for being too "weird" (which i've always suspected is code for "doesn't look/sound like she belongs in the pussycat dolls, and therefore shouldn't be making pop music").

in any case, i'm reminded of the reception stravinsky's "the rite of spring" initially received — perhaps like that piece, volta is just ahead of its time. :D

fwiw, i love it.

[kiki]

I'm not one for analyzing music. I enjoyed Volta, in probably the most platonic way a person can enjoy music. I just like the sound of it. I don't question it, and therefore I can't relate to that you're saying, but I'm glad you and I both like Bjork on some level.

[M]

Can't agree more about "Dull Flame of Desire" and the transition into "Innocence." They make the perfect companion songs to me and that transition is truly heavenly....a full body experience :-) Enjoyed the album review. it's growing on me for sure. I start to lose interest about halfway through the album but that seems to be a common problem. Thanks for the blog!

[BlackRaspberry]

Yeah, cosign on the Dull Flame/Innocence transition. It's possibly the best moment on the album.

[bryce]

My dislike for Bjork's music has nothing to do with production or beat choices or collaborators. It has everything to do with her voice, which has always been too over the top dramatic for my tastes. I admire her vision but wish she could show some restraint once in a while.

[Alyson]

Re: "I See Who You Are"

It is a common theme, and the poem that immediately came to my mind is one of my favorites: "To His Coy Mistress" by Andrew Marvell. A great big piece of smarmy cheese in the guise of metaphysical poetry.

"The grave's a fine and private place,
But none I think do there embrace."

http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/marvell/coy.htm

I thought that you might like to read it, Rich. By the way, long-time reader, first-time commenter. Love your blogs (even the music ones!).

[Alyson]

D'oh! Here's the correct link: To His Coy Mistress