Volta - Bjork Album Review

Volta - Bjork Album Review

Photo:warren du preez + nick thornton-jones

Album Review

Whacky returns with Volta: world music with a difference.

As we all know, Bjork Gudmunsdottir is an acquired taste. The downright weird and, sort of, wonderful one remains as enigmatic as ever. Mostly written and produced by Bjork, she’s enlisted uber producer Timbaland and Antony Hegarty (Antony and the Johnsons), along with acclaimed African artists Toumani Diabate and Congolese band Konono No 1. There’s also a 10 piece brass section comprising female Icelandic musicians and Min Xiao-Fen to play Chinese stringed instrument pipa. Volta, her sixth album is as quirky and avante garde as ever. There is no better one to listen to if you appreciate a truly progressive artist, though its not always easy on the ear because she’s not one for your average 3 minute ditty. She doesn’t do, what most of us expect in the mainstream, tunes as such. She comes close though with one song only, Hope.

There again, Bjork isn’t mainstream, never will be, but she is hugely popular in some circles, particularly musos. Her strengths, if they can be called that, are that she evermore explores and pushes the boundaries, even if some it is uncomfortable and sometimes contrived, for contrived’s sake. Most, ordinary folk, will find it, odd at best. But Volta shouldn’t overlooked, purely for the expansive sonic experiences that unfold. The fun, which Bjork can be, combined with her outlandish voice, starts with a pounding march like stomp on Earth Intruders. It’s the kind of female equivalent of 80s Peter Gabriel. After a few listens, it becomes quite catchy. The more you listen to it the more you find what’s going on, though snorting foghorns and seagulls on the outro don’t exactly work. But that’s Bjork. In sharp contrast, Wanderlust is an erratic beats-brass excursion with references to her house boat in New York : she goes, “ I feel at home whenever, the unknown surrounds me, I receive its embrace, aboard my floating house.”

New sensation Antony Hegarty adds his quirky vocals on brass fueled The Dull Flame Of Desire, an odd jaunt indeed, but it fits the bill. Grating Innocence lends more to sound tweaking in the studio than music, though plaintive I See Who You Are is absolutely divine which is given the oriental feel via the masterful Min Xiao-Fen’s pipa. Filler Vertebrae By Vertebrae should have been left on the cutting room floor, as should brass heavy Pneumonia. Things improve with Hope, a beat and bass driven sojourn about a suicide bomber, with delicious splashes of clavichord which seems at odds with the content. Volta’s low point is the unrelenting chanting on shambolic Declare Independence. Hegarty pops up again on the finale, the most stripped sound Bjork could muster for My Juvenile as she relates to imparting plenty of warmth to one already gone, lamenting with, “ Thank you for again / to get to be able to send warmth / perhaps I set you too free too fast / too young.”

Absolutely fascinating. Still groundbreaking, but not the mark of a genius.

Elly Roberts

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