BJÖRK: BJÖRK (1977)
1) Arabadrengurinn;
2) Búkolla; 3) Alta Mira; 4) Jóhannes Kjarval; 5) Fúsi Hreindýr; 6) Himnaför;
7) Óliver; 8) Álfur Út Úr Hól; 9)
Músastiginn; 10) Bænin.
12-year old Björk Guðmundsdóttir is calmly, but
warily gazing at us from the album cover, wrapped up in silks and surrounded by
a background that seems to be coming straight out of somebody's
not-too-imaginative visual idea of 1001
Nights. As you turn on the music, the quiet sounds of crickets and night
birds are soon joined by mysterious sitars and sarods, almost like at the
beginning of George Harrison's ʽLove You Toʼ. «Oh that sweet enchantress Björk»,
you think to yourself, «such an idealistic visionary already at such a tender
age... sure this is manneristic and derivative, but to dabble in Indian and
Near Eastern influences while most of her schoolmates were probably up to their
necks in the Osmonds or ABBA...» And then it actually begins.
Not a lot of people have even heard of this album, let alone heard the
actual music (for obvious reasons, it has never been officially released on
CD), and they have not missed much. It was recorded almost by accident: some
people at a local Icelandic record label heard the girl singing Tina Charles'
ʽI Love To Loveʼ on the radio and offered her a contract for a children's
album. With the aid of her stepfather and a bunch of local musicians, they
scrambled together a bunch of pop songs, translated them into Icelandic, so
that even local kids who didn't excel
at their English lessons could get into the groove, and put them out on a
market targeted at... honestly, I have no
idea who the people in that market are, and I would probably be afraid and
embarrassed to socialize with any of them, anyway.
Nevertheless, all great artists eventually make
people interested in checking out their history, and even if it is completely
worthless on its own, Björk offers
some educational value. The key aspect is the singing, of course. As these ten
songs show, Björk is a perfect natural: her range and tone here are already as
strong as on her «mature» albums (they didn't offer her that contract just for
cuteness' sake, after all), and all that is missing is the result of training —
the punk attitude had not caught up with the girl yet, nor did the avantgarde
jazz stylistics, so she is simply copying the note patterns of her favorite
singers and sifting them through her childish, wildish, not particularly
well-disciplined soprano. Subtlety does not exist as of yet, as you can most
clearly see in her take on ʽThe Fool On The Hillʼ (ʽÁlfur Út Úr Hólʼ),
done technically well, but «oversung»: the girl simply has a bigger voice than
she can properly handle at the moment, and the cover suffers from superfluous
screechiness.
Musically, the
arrangements are all over the place, but with a permanent emphasis on cuteness:
«kiddie disco», «kiddie ska», «kiddie jazz-pop», «kiddie bossa nova», etc. The
lyrics are not always direct translations: for instance, ʽBúkollaʼ, despite
being based on Stevie Wonder's ʽYour Kiss Is Sweetʼ, has been turned into an
ode to... a magic cow ("I took a
hair from your tail...." and, apparently, mixed it with a good dose of
Icelandic volcanic mushrooms). The vocal deliveries generally have that
annoying «giddy-up» drive to them which is a typical attribute of most
«children's albums» — which makes it all the more amazing and exciting that, in
a way, Björk has managed to retain it in her «mature» years.
In fact, there is no
way that we could ever assess Björk the same way as the average
Icelandic buyer could assess it back in 1977 — for us, hearing her lively
«get-up-and-jump» notes on ʽAlta Miraʼ or ʽOliverʼ will always trigger
associations with, at the very least, the Björk of ʽThere's More To Life Than
Thisʼ or ʽIt's Oh So Quietʼ or any of those hell-raising romps of the early
part of her adult career. Even though, other than the voice itself, the only
thing that her adult career has in common with this tripe is diversity and
unpredictability.
Speaking of which,
the album also has two instrumental compositions, one of which (ʽJohannes
Kjarvalʼ), dedicated to an Icelandic painter, is a simple, but effective
flute-led folk ditty with a fast waltz bridge, with Björk herself playing the
flute — deserving, I would imagine, an admiring pat on the head from Ray
Thomas, whose Moody Blues style of playing could easily serve as a source of
inspiration (probably not, but then there is no reason why Björk should not
have had access to classic Moody Blues records); the second one, ʽMúsastiginnʼ,
is also dominated by the flute but a little bit more «martial» and Brit-poppy. Both
unquestionably show the beginnings of a serious composing talent, although
their chief virtue is that of providing brief respites from the girlscout vocal
model.
Ultimately, the best
thing that can probably be said about the album is that, after it actually
managed to sell some copies in Iceland, Björk found the inner strength to refuse
the proposal to record a second one in the same vein — instead, she used the
money to get herself a piano and begin to study on a more serious level. Although
it does make one wonder how the girl would have fared if they'd managed to mold
her into an early Icelandic role model for Britney Spears...
Awesome, you're starting up the Björk reviews. I've never heard this album, but your description of it basically cements my idea of how it would sound. I should check it out one of these days, though, as a historical curio.
ReplyDeleteAlso, what exactly do you mean by 'Músastiginn' sounding Brit-poppy? Again, I've never heard it so I'm not quite sure what you would mean by it.
DeleteThis came into the record store where I work and we played it. It was more interesting than her later stuff for me. Like Sugarcubes for kids. I guess.
ReplyDelete