“You show me continents, I see the islands”
Seemingly lost in the grey area of sound, Bjork continues to keep her message and intentions crowned with secrets and riddles. She reappears in 2004, gracing us with her fifth studio album Medulla. Probably her most challenging collection of work, Medulla follows in the tracks of 2001’s introspective Vespertine, pushing the envelope and forgoing any guarantee of accessibility.
“Where is the line with you?”
Where as Vespertine was an IDM laptop affair, on Medulla, the Icelandic diva conveys her vision with only the human voice, only deviating from this theme with a few synth beats and sampled bleeps scattered throughout the album. The result: this is one of those albums most will find hard to grasp and appreciate until after several listens. “Desired Constellation” captures this ambivalent portrait of sound, with compelling lyrics: “It's slippery when / Your sense of justice / Murmurs underneath / And is asking you/ How am I going to make it right?”
“Carry my joy on the left, Carry my pain on the right”
Mike Patton and the Icelandic Choir join Bjork in her dark and distraught piece “Where Is the Line." Layers and layers of opposing voices fill this supernatural track, some barbaric and some angelic. Bjork exudes, “My purse wide open / you ask again / I see you trying to / Cash into accounts / everywhere.”
Compare this to the album’s most accessible (and percussively bizarre) track “Triumph of the Heart." A circus of sounds in celebration of life, fueled with a beatbox rhythm underneath. Her lyrics here probably characterize her artistic intentions best, “Smooth soft red velvety lungs / Are pushing a network of oxygen joyfully / Through a nose, through a mouth / But all enjoys, which brings us to / The triumph of a heart that gives all.”
"Show me forgiveness, for having lost faith in myself"
In the end Medulla is an experience of lyrical bite and vocal combat. Her symbolism explodes with textures none of her other albums have ever exposed or fully explored. Like her unexpected (and to some, uninvited) predecessor Vespertine, Bjork’s Medulla should produce every type of reaction, even amongst her biggest and most dedicated fans.
Link: "http://firehorsecancer.multiply.com/music/item/1391"-->>
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