Album of the day (#4514): Vespertine by Björk - Music

albummaster
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Today's album of the day

Vespertine by Björk (View album | Buy this album)

Year: 2001.
Country:

Overall rank: 175
Average rating: 83/100 (from 940 votes).

Thumbnail. Click to enlarge.

Tracks:
1. Hidden Place
2. Cocoon
3. It's Not Up To You
4. Undo
5. Pagan Poetry
6. Frosti
7. Aurora
8. An Echo A Stain
9. Sun In My Mouth
10. Heirloom
11. Harm Of Will
12. Unison

About album of the day: The BestEverAlbums.com album of the day is the album appearing most prominently in member charts in the previous 24 hours. If an album, or artist, has previously been selected within a x day period, the next highest album is picked instead (and so on) to ensure a bit of variety. A full history of album of the day can be viewed here.

DommeDamian
Imperfect, sensitive Aspie with a melody addiction

Gender: Male
Age: 23
Location: where the flowers grow.

"The first impression with Bjork's music is always of something terribly trivial, obnoxious and, ultimately, boring. Vespertine (Elektra, 2001) is no exception. The "modern" rhythms are a masquerade. The tenuous arrangements are hardly innovative. Bjork is a plastic fantastic vocalist, who can turn pretty much any sequence of notes into a song and add a magical, oneiric feeling to whatever plays around her, but Hidden Place is merely easy listening with echoes of 1960s' film music in the ethereal choir.
The bubbling, sparkling, delicate tapestry of It's Not up To You (a veritable jungle of sound effects) eventually releases a string-driven aria that belongs to Broadway shows. The coda, again, brings in the female choir, a recurring trick throughout the album (oddly reminiscent of the Rolling Stones' You Can't Always Get What You Want). A similar pattern occurs in An Echo A Stain.
The subdued, disjointed, timidly noisy electronics (courtesy of Matmos) perfectly complement Bjork's wandering and overdubbed vocals in Undo, ranking as the second most important trick of the album, soon joined by the ever more cosmic choir. By the fifth track you are beginning to sense that there is very little of substance, just those two tricks and Bjork's voice. Bjork's quasi-operatic talent does shine in Aurora, that sounds like the soundtrack to a happily lost Alice In Wonderland. A childish atmosphere populates the closing Unison as well.
Too mellow to display any significant emotion, the album lives of romantic and surreal soundscapes, broadly reminiscent of film and show tunes.
She is not a genius of composition, but her paradisiac, fairy-queen crooning has indeed created something new the way Hendrix's guitar invented something new. She doesn't own the arrangements, and often seems indifferent to them (Heirloom is simply Bjork's vocals on top of Console's instrumental Crabcraft), but the album's complexity is the ideal setting for her art, whatever her art is.

Just like the Beatles before her, Bjork has made trivial pop music enhanced with studio wizardry. It's the studio wizardry, not the music, that people buy. And the tv-friendly image, of course. Anybody who thinks Bjork is a genius should try to listen at least to Solex. Let your ears, not publicity, judge."

Scaruffi - https://www.scaruffi.com/vol6/bjork.html#ves
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Last edited by DommeDamian on 04/30/2023 21:51; edited 1 time in total

Romanelli
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Gender: Male
Location: Broomfield, Colorado

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DommeDamian wrote:

The first impression with Bjork's music is always of something terribly trivial, obnoxious and, ultimately, boring. Vespertine (Elektra, 2001) is no exception. The "modern" rhythms are a masquerade. The tenuous arrangements are hardly innovative. Bjork is a plastic fantastic vocalist, who can turn pretty much any sequence of notes into a song and add a magical, oneiric feeling to whatever plays around her, but Hidden Place is merely easy listening with echoes of 1960s' film music in the ethereal choir.
The bubbling, sparkling, delicate tapestry of It's Not up To You (a veritable jungle of sound effects) eventually releases a string-driven aria that belongs to Broadway shows. The coda, again, brings in the female choir, a recurring trick throughout the album (oddly reminiscent of the Rolling Stones' You Can't Always Get What You Want). A similar pattern occurs in An Echo A Stain.
The subdued, disjointed, timidly noisy electronics (courtesy of Matmos) perfectly complement Bjork's wandering and overdubbed vocals in Undo, ranking as the second most important trick of the album, soon joined by the ever more cosmic choir. By the fifth track you are beginning to sense that there is very little of substance, just those two tricks and Bjork's voice. Bjork's quasi-operatic talent does shine in Aurora, that sounds like the soundtrack to a happily lost Alice In Wonderland. A childish atmosphere populates the closing Unison as well.
Too mellow to display any significant emotion, the album lives of romantic and surreal soundscapes, broadly reminiscent of film and show tunes.
She is not a genius of composition, but her paradisiac, fairy-queen crooning has indeed created something new the way Hendrix's guitar invented something new. She doesn't own the arrangements, and often seems indifferent to them (Heirloom is simply Bjork's vocals on top of Console's instrumental Crabcraft), but the album's complexity is the ideal setting for her art, whatever her art is.

Just like the Beatles before her, Bjork has made trivial pop music enhanced with studio wizardry. It's the studio wizardry, not the music, that people buy. And the tv-friendly image, of course. Anybody who thinks Bjork is a genius should try to listen at least to Solex. Let your ears, not publicity, judge.

My ears are always the judge. And I like Bjork. A lot.
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HoldenM
To Pedantically Split Infinitives

Gender: Male
Age: 29

Yeah. Sorry for liking "trivial pop music," and sorry for being too dumb to not see through the facade of her glacial production and intricate textures, but as far as I'm concerned, this rules. I've been listening to Vespertine for well over a decade and it still sounds like nothing else. I love how skeletal and intimate it is, and I love how Björk expresses her feelings of love and romance as something that does not have her bursting with life (which would be fine), but as a special, private phenomenon. It's as genuine and affecting in all the right ways.

Track picks
1. Hidden Place
3. It's Not Up To You
4. Undo
5. Pagan Poetry
12. Unison
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Romanelli
Bone Swah

Gender: Male
Location: Broomfield, Colorado

Moderator

DommeDamian wrote:

The first impression with Bjork's music is always of something terribly trivial, obnoxious and, ultimately, boring. Vespertine (Elektra, 2001) is no exception. The "modern" rhythms are a masquerade. The tenuous arrangements are hardly innovative. Bjork is a plastic fantastic vocalist, who can turn pretty much any sequence of notes into a song and add a magical, oneiric feeling to whatever plays around her, but Hidden Place is merely easy listening with echoes of 1960s' film music in the ethereal choir.
The bubbling, sparkling, delicate tapestry of It's Not up To You (a veritable jungle of sound effects) eventually releases a string-driven aria that belongs to Broadway shows. The coda, again, brings in the female choir, a recurring trick throughout the album (oddly reminiscent of the Rolling Stones' You Can't Always Get What You Want). A similar pattern occurs in An Echo A Stain.
The subdued, disjointed, timidly noisy electronics (courtesy of Matmos) perfectly complement Bjork's wandering and overdubbed vocals in Undo, ranking as the second most important trick of the album, soon joined by the ever more cosmic choir. By the fifth track you are beginning to sense that there is very little of substance, just those two tricks and Bjork's voice. Bjork's quasi-operatic talent does shine in Aurora, that sounds like the soundtrack to a happily lost Alice In Wonderland. A childish atmosphere populates the closing Unison as well.
Too mellow to display any significant emotion, the album lives of romantic and surreal soundscapes, broadly reminiscent of film and show tunes.
She is not a genius of composition, but her paradisiac, fairy-queen crooning has indeed created something new the way Hendrix's guitar invented something new. She doesn't own the arrangements, and often seems indifferent to them (Heirloom is simply Bjork's vocals on top of Console's instrumental Crabcraft), but the album's complexity is the ideal setting for her art, whatever her art is.

Just like the Beatles before her, Bjork has made trivial pop music enhanced with studio wizardry. It's the studio wizardry, not the music, that people buy. And the tv-friendly image, of course. Anybody who thinks Bjork is a genius should try to listen at least to Solex. Let your ears, not publicity, judge.

Actually, simply lifting the overbloated opinions of Scaruffi and posting them word for word as your own ideas is more creatively weak than Bjork will ever be. You should be a bit ashamed of yourself here.

You post has been reported for plagiarising this (the copyright is clearly stated at the top of the page):

https://www.scaruffi.com/vol6/bjork.html#ves
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'Fore the devil knows we're dead...

MadhattanJack
I mean, metal is okay, but...

Gender: Male

Scaruffi wrote:

Just like the Beatles before her, Bjork has made trivial pop music enhanced with studio wizardry. It's the studio wizardry, not the music, that people buy. And the tv-friendly image, of course. Anybody who thinks Bjork is a genius should try to listen at least to Solex. Let your ears, not publicity, judge.

I can't say I really like Scaruffi, but I like Solex, a lot more than I like Bjork in fact, though personally I like Phantogram a lot more. Frankly, I probably like Lene Lovich a lot more, if we're getting onto the subject of female vocalists who dress strangely and sing in a style that matches their mode of dress, but in neither case would this be saying all that much... Also, I wouldn't say the more indie/DIY approach that Solex takes necessarily leads to better albums — it's still a form of studio artifice, it's not like these people are getting bands together and doing live rehearsals to produce these results, and even on the first Solex album you're not hearing a lot of real (i.e., not-sampled) instruments.

Honestly, I don't know why people buy Bjork's records — I haven't really liked anything she's done since Life's Too Good, but that only shows how limited my tastes are, I guess. Regardless, studio artifice/wizardry isn't all that uncommon or unusual, and I don't remember the publicity being that intensive at the time, so I'm forced to conclude it's because her voice is so distinctive — sort of like Kate Bush really, because she (Kate Bush, that is) is just that good at singing, or how The Cure wouldn't be anywhere near as popular if it were "just some guy" doing the vocals instead of Robert Smith.

So I agree that Vespertine is sort of boring. It has "moments," quite a few in fact, but frankly most of the songs just meander for a couple of minutes before they actually get started, and there are precious few hooks being repeated in there to grab onto so you can actually remember any of it after hearing it. Still, some people enjoy that sort of approach... I probably think "Pagan Poetry" is the standout track because it's the exact same progression (and tonality) as the Blue Nile's "Let's Go Out Tonight," only without the chorus to resolve it. In other words, it worked on me because I was already familiar with it.

DommeDamian
Imperfect, sensitive Aspie with a melody addiction

Gender: Male
Age: 23
Location: where the flowers grow.

Romanelli wrote:

DommeDamian wrote:

The first impression with Bjork's music is always of something terribly trivial, obnoxious and, ultimately, boring. Vespertine (Elektra, 2001) is no exception. The "modern" rhythms are a masquerade. The tenuous arrangements are hardly innovative. Bjork is a plastic fantastic vocalist, who can turn pretty much any sequence of notes into a song and add a magical, oneiric feeling to whatever plays around her, but Hidden Place is merely easy listening with echoes of 1960s' film music in the ethereal choir.
The bubbling, sparkling, delicate tapestry of It's Not up To You (a veritable jungle of sound effects) eventually releases a string-driven aria that belongs to Broadway shows. The coda, again, brings in the female choir, a recurring trick throughout the album (oddly reminiscent of the Rolling Stones' You Can't Always Get What You Want). A similar pattern occurs in An Echo A Stain.
The subdued, disjointed, timidly noisy electronics (courtesy of Matmos) perfectly complement Bjork's wandering and overdubbed vocals in Undo, ranking as the second most important trick of the album, soon joined by the ever more cosmic choir. By the fifth track you are beginning to sense that there is very little of substance, just those two tricks and Bjork's voice. Bjork's quasi-operatic talent does shine in Aurora, that sounds like the soundtrack to a happily lost Alice In Wonderland. A childish atmosphere populates the closing Unison as well.
Too mellow to display any significant emotion, the album lives of romantic and surreal soundscapes, broadly reminiscent of film and show tunes.
She is not a genius of composition, but her paradisiac, fairy-queen crooning has indeed created something new the way Hendrix's guitar invented something new. She doesn't own the arrangements, and often seems indifferent to them (Heirloom is simply Bjork's vocals on top of Console's instrumental Crabcraft), but the album's complexity is the ideal setting for her art, whatever her art is.

Just like the Beatles before her, Bjork has made trivial pop music enhanced with studio wizardry. It's the studio wizardry, not the music, that people buy. And the tv-friendly image, of course. Anybody who thinks Bjork is a genius should try to listen at least to Solex. Let your ears, not publicity, judge.

Actually, simply lifting the overbloated opinions of Scaruffi and posting them word for word as your own ideas is more creatively weak than Bjork will ever be. You should be a bit ashamed of yourself here.

You post has been reported for plagiarising this (the copyright is clearly stated at the top of the page):

https://www.scaruffi.com/vol6/bjork.html#ves

I should have put it in quotes (edit: done now). It wasn't my intention to post it as my own, so I apologize for the consequences. From the way the album is referenced by the parentheses, label and release year, it should've been no surprise. After all, I do like this record quite a bit (not as much as Debut tho), and I love the Beatles as well, I don't enjoy Solex that much more personally. It's because of Bjork's fanbase that I wanted to see the reaction to this copypasta. However I don't personally see this as a masterpiece, and maybe some of the people who do, would defend the album in a light where I could see it more clearly.

Nobody should be ashamed here (in retrospect I am always ashamed of myself), it's really not that deep guys.
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My Top 100 :
www.besteveralbums.com/thechart.php?c=4...amp;page=1

My music:
- www.hyperfollow.com/dommedamian
Spotify: ----------------------------------------------------↓

Last edited by DommeDamian on 04/30/2023 21:54; edited 3 times in total

DommeDamian
Imperfect, sensitive Aspie with a melody addiction

Gender: Male
Age: 23
Location: where the flowers grow.

and for the record, I like trivial pop muzak more than the next guy here, so if one should apologize for that it's me Laughing

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www.besteveralbums.com/thechart.php?c=4...amp;page=1

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Spotify: ----------------------------------------------------↓

craola
crayon master

Location: pdx

i think a person can enjoy both solex and bjork. i don't see the need to equate them though as their music was completely different even twenty-plus years ago.

part of bjork's charm is aesthetic, certainly. she is quirky, and her songs are quirky. it goes hand-in-hand. her voice has an unmatched alien beauty to it, and the production is fittingly beautiful in a peculiar way. nothing wrong with any of that. she used a fair bit of sampling, yeah. she's never hidden that. she did a television appearance where she praised her production team at length for their ability to find and record strange sounds that fit everything she was doing perfectly. i don't understand how any of these things argue against the quality of this album.

i like that the record starts with the subdued hidden place. it's not the brash album opener human behavior was. this is a different, much more intimate sort of album, and this track sets the tone. what follows is beautiful from end-to-end. she had a music box built for the album. i mean, who does that?

is her songwriting the magnum opus of western civilization? perhaps not, but she's a rather creative songwriter nonetheless, and her voice is incredible.
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