HOME FEATURES COLUMNS FILM LIT MUSIC BLOG CONTACT		bjork :: vespertine Originally published in The Wire By Hua Hsu It was a bit of a disappointment to discover that Vespertine is indeed a real word and not some bit of Bjorkspeak make-believe. I've never really scrutinized her lyrical output, pretending instead that her emissions were fairy-dusted curses and coos not intended for human translation. After all, her talent is for dressing, spicing and freezing songs, not penning drab universalist maxims to be recited in the shower. The frozen explosions of her voice have always been her greatest musical asset, so it's a bit awkward to hone in on the intimacy of Vespertine in order to come to grips with the everyday feelings, words and general plainness that reside at the nerve center of the world's most high-profile pop surrealist. There is much here that resembles her work in Lars Von Trier's film Dancer in the Dark and its accompanying SelmaSongs album, in which sound and vision paced each other in unusually natural ways. Vespertine similarly celebrates life's knack for breaking into song and dance, choreographing water drips, wind chimes and snowfall attack. It's also a celebration of inhabiting significant moments that find her waking up in the arms of love, kicking the blanket off or musing on a glass of water. It stands to reason that things that were once loud will eventually get quiet. Having officially outgrown any lingering desire to become Queen of the Dance, Bjork's conspirators this time around-among them Matmos, Zeena Parkins, bassist Guy Sigsworth and Matthew Herbert-ensure that Vespertine is a meticulous, lush and Ambient experience. She has always exercised healthy control over her image and sound, but this album represents the first time Bjork has constructed, arranged and written so much of the music as well. Packing her laptop and trekking to her mountain hut in Iceland, she tooled away with little digital orchestras and broke her voice every which way but real before reemerging with the templates for the album. Plugging and matching the right shades of backup, her role was like that of a 1970s arranger handpicking and cueing top-of-the-range session players. Her vision breathes so much life and splendor into each track that it's almost impossible to look at them directly. They're like crystalline raindrops suspended in air, absolutely transcendent moments of beauty captured in song and trapped in words. Now, there's a fine line between something being 'good' and 'beautiful,' and a tiny minority of these songs aren't very 'good' in the conventional sense. They might falter and stall too long on a single good idea, for example, or they might rely too heavily on her voice to deliver the message home. But the sounds are always beautiful, hinting at the paradise she says she sought in her Icelandic mountain hideaway. Eschewing the grafted club cultures and conscious futurism of her middle albums, Vespertine's arrangements are stunning. "Aurora" coats her voice in shine and trudges through snow, ascending through Zeena Parkin's resplendent harp lines like a lightning bolt retreating back toward the heavens. On "Frosti," the fragile sway of wind chimes are sampled and reprogrammed to haunting, gorgeous effect. And a music box stranded on a glacier propels the melody of "Sun In My Mouth," over which Bjork, nicking ee cummings' poem "Wade," asks herself, "Will I complete the mystery of my flesh?" The lead single and album opener, "Hidden Place," hints at the extent to which her lyrics parallel their fragile musical arrangements: "I'm so close to tears and so close to simply calling you up/I'm simply suggesting/We go to that hidden place." Love is what animates the flora and fauna of Bjork's Vespertine paradise-love for her child, mother and partner, love for the unknown devices that culminate in "perfect days" ("It's Not Up to You"), love for "moments of shine." To be allowed near that controlled space of intimacy is the listener's sometimes-disorienting and voyeuristic privilege, especially when she addresses her love directly or sobs in her shirtsleeves. The intense melt of "Cocoon" nearly matches the macabre tone of Dancer in the Dark, particularly the trembling moment three minutes in, when her barely audible whisper conjures a feeling beyond sadness as she pleads, "Who would have known?" In the end, Vespertine commits its magic by daring to go places more obvious and more human than one would have expected. While Sigur Ros and even Radiohead have seemingly found a way to go beyond language, Bjork's tender twinkles anchor her to a colloquial, almost simpleminded vocabulary of touch and sense. It's a beautiful thing.