Thanx A!

It's a shame it will only be release in 2 weeks!

workin' on my review...

GangstaFam said:

have u read mine?

MikeMatronik said:

Not yet. I will once I'm done with mine though. Don't want to influence my opinion too much.

GangstaFam said:

It will be interesting comparing them...

MikeMatronik said:

My head is swimming!

GangstaFam said:

Anthony ruins the songs.

I am very content on waiting for this.

superspaceboy said:

ditto.

MikeMatronik said:

the thing is, i think he has a great voice. what completely ruins it is the lisp. if he could just excise that, he'd really be impressive.

MikeMatronik said:

Hardly! I think he's a huge asset.

You all are making it difficult to resist!

Moonbeam said:

then don't.

GangstaFam said:

Bastard!

Moonbeam said:

Normally I would hold out too, but I just couldn't this time.

GangstaFam said:

I still think I'm going to try to hold out. Maybe I'll d/l it as a birthday gift.

Moonbeam said:

If you're gonna wait 4 days, why not wait the whole time?

GangstaFam said:

We'll see. Are there any confirmed B-sides yet?

Moonbeam said:

Nope. They're still finishing work on the single.

GangstaFam said:

Still loving the heck out of "Innocence".

Moonbeam said:

Moi aussi. Can't wait to see the results of the video contest.

GangstaFam said:

Why don't you make one? It would be fun!

i wanna sex her up to this album.



drop them thongs bjork

this album has alot of organic moments.. very pleasurable to the ears.


this album is right under vespertine to me.. very beautiful

Sdldawn said:

You sure have been cheeky lately.

Okay, here goes nuthin'...

It's come to my attention that this discussion of the album going on before its release is annoying and pissing some people off. Sorry to those that are sensitive about it. I'm giving you a fair warning here though. DON'T READ THIS if you don't want to know the deal.

Anyone who knows me knows that I'm pretty strict with myself about how I listen to music and with my favorite artists, I usually hold out until the actual CD drops, no matter how much peer pressure or tantalizing info is out there. I hate snippets. I hate hearing an album in pieces. Especially when a work is new to me, I have to absorb it as a whole, uninterrupted and almost always by myself. Music is sacred to me and I treat the listening experience as a ritual.

With this album and Tori's new one, nothing was different. I waited until I could hear the whole thing. But I've been in such an emotional space lately AND I had a sense that these would be very important albums for me. I knew that I needed this music and it couldn't have come at a better time.

So anyway, with that disclaimer out of the way lemme just say that I FUCKING LOVE VOLTA!!!

Instant

I'll take this in stages.

Overall impressions:

Based on the initial news of the album and then later the info about collaborators, titles, the album artwork, etc. I got a very strong Post vibe from everything I was hearing. It seemed that this was going to be her most ecclectic and colorful album since that release and possibly a return to fun, poppy Bjork. The album cover even looks like a throwback to the glory days of the Me Company art design. Mentioning that she'd abandoned strings for horn sections made me instantly think of Debut for some reason. Those assessments were accurate in some ways, but off in others.

This album is exploding with ideas. Yet it's also very unified in a way that Post never was. That's what ties it to her most recent work. Since '97, Bjork's been on a mission to "homogenize" her work and for the most part, she's succeeded. The kaleidoscopic style shifting of her first few records was turned in for sonic unity and thematic connections.

The instrumental interludes, crashing waves and elegant horns parts tie the whole thing together seemlessly. The subject matter is the most pagan and political of her career. That's what she was going for, and again, she succeeded. There's a tribal thrust running through most of the songs and this is her most 'world music' sound to date. And I say that in the most loving way. The exotic Asian stringed instruments, the percussion, the finger pianos, the live drums - all of it give the album a warm, organic aura on top of the electronic foundation. In that way, this is a purely Bjork album.

As much as I love him, I was a bit worried when I heard she was working with Timbaland. And to a lesser extent, the huge number of collaborators had me thinking "Bedtime Stories". Like, "Uh oh, Bjork is shopping for styles!" I had nothing to worry about. The songs that Timbaland is part of have been so fucked with, chopped up and spit out again that they don't really resemble one of his typical tracks. And all of the drum work, guest vocals and virtuoso musicians are used in such a way that Bjork creates a new musical lexicon in the same way she did with Homogenic, Vespertine and Medulla. This is certainly more varied than any of those records, but the songwriting and mission statement she had going into the project guarantees that everything fits.

She also really loosened up on this album. She's improvising again. The studio perfection and intricate production of her last few is replaced by spontaneity and rawness. The beats are rough, distorted and chaotic. The soloists are given a lot of room to move. The songs take a lot of unexpected turns. In that way, I find a lot of similarities to Homogenic. On some songs, this is the hardest she's sounded since that album. These are the most full-bodied songs since then. Her voice hasn't sounded this full-throated and wild since Homogenic. The sensibilities of 2007 Bjork are all over this album, but sonically, it's almost as if she skipped everything since Homogenic and that VOLTA was what she came up with next. Makes sense in a way as this is the 10 year anniversary of that record.

Another thing that those 2 albums have in common is their primary instruments. Homogenic was a huge development in her sound. She'd used strings before on "Isobel" and "Hyperballad", but they came across as a manifesto on Homogenic. They were the dominant melodic instrument on nearly every song. Here she uses horns. But not in the way I expected. For some reason, I was anticipating the sexy jazz swing of songs like "Aeroplane" or the seafaring whimsy of "Anchor Song". Not at all. She doesn't use them as the main melodic force in any of these songs. They're subtle. And they're used as texture, shading and mood. I can pick out muted trumpets and especially French horns through most of the songs. Instead of the lead qualities of saxophone, this gives the album a grand, filmic quality. Sometimes the horns sound like fanfare, sometimes like foghorns on freighters, sometimes like the background to a spy movie. This gives everything a quaint, out of time feeling and in combination with the ambient sounds of seagulls and waves crashing paints everything in nautical tones. In some places, this is the closest she's gotten to folk music. There's a nomadic, searching quality. "Wanderlust" is a perfect thesis statement for this era.

I heard several people complaining on various forums or early reviews that there were too many slow and simple songs. WTF!? Now I love a good Bjork club-banger as much as the next guy, but I think some of her most amazing songs are the ones that showcase one instrument and her voice. Stuff like "Sweet Sweet Intuition", "Cover Me", Visur Vatnsenda-Rosu" and the Brodsky Quartet version of "Hyperballad" show how insanely genius she is more plainly than anywhere else. And I love this album for having several songs like that. "Dull Flame of Desire" gets by on a very simple horn figure and some drums at the end. "I See Who You Are" features some quiet electronic bubbles and a Japanese string instrument and little more. I honestly cannot understand the complaints about slow songs. And when it comes down to it, there are technically only 3 or 4. But there is so much energy and heart to these songs, that any lag in tempo only intensifies the mood. The fast songs are the fun, catchy ones. The slow ones are the true heart of Volta. I found myself crying to tracks 3, 5 and 7 and they're all slow songs. Fucking gorgeous.

I hate to make too many comparisons, because this album definitely has its own thing going for it. But I realized after the first listen that the pacing is almost idential to that of Homogenic. When you listen, think about it. The tempo and mood shifts throughout are very related.

Earth Intruders -> Hunter (fast, energetic openers)
Wanderlust -> Joga (slow parts accented by super crunchy beats)
Dull Flame of Desire -> Unravel (slow building elegant tearjerkers)
Innocence -> Bachelorette (okay, this one doesn't fit so well. but they're both singles and faster songs)
I See Who You Are -> All Neon Like (mysterious, dreamy, strange)
Vertabrae by Vertabrae -> 5 Years (WAY crunchy)
Pneumonia -> Immature (slow and perhaps the saddest songs of their album)
Hope -> Alarm Call (Very happy sounding and related sentiment)
Declare Independence -> Pluto (freaky, psycho, scary, screamy Bjork)
My Juvenile -> All is Full of Love (beautiful slow song to end it and perhaps the purest love song on each)

See?

I'm sure I'll think of a million more things. But these are my thoughts based on the first day and 3 listens so far.

Again, B shows me why she's my favorite female artist and probably always will be. If it wasn't for the massive volume of work that Prince and Bowie have released, she would hold the crown for me. Album for album, song for song there's no one better.

Enough gushing. I'll have a track-by-track ready by tomorrow.