Vespertine (2001)
by Björk

For those of us who strain to imagine what heaven sounds like, Vespertine. Björk's latest album, likely serves as a very close approximation. It's not just the heavenly choirs that create the effect -- although they do back her vocals throughout almost every track -- but the purely sublime sounds she produces, the sweetness of her melodies, the sincerity and vision and passion of her lyrics, and a voice that sounds at once childish and timeless, like a fairy or a goddess or, yes, an angel come to reveal herself and bless us with light and magic and happiness.

Depending on your familiarity with Björk, you might think, "Björk? An angel? Maybe a pixie, maybe an elf but... an angel?" Her earlier albums were certainly more pop, although they were a unique sort of pop that wasn't anything like Top 40, full of increasingly electronic and electrical passions. If anything, Vespertine reaches back to a sound akin to her first solo album, Debut, only with a breadth of vision and a perspective no doubt borne of a decade's worth of growing up, both musically and mentally. Gone are the direct lines of songs like "Aeroplane" or "Venus As A Boy." Instead there are beautiful songs whose meaning doesn't quite come across in the lyrics, although the words speak to the soul:

how do i master
the perfect day
six glasses of water
seven phonecalls

if you leave it alone
it might just happen
anyway

it's not up to you
well, it never really was...

The sound of the album is lush, lovingly haunted by angelic choirs of joy, harps and music boxes, electronic forest sounds, fairy voices. Above and below and through it all, Björk pours out bucketloads of tenderness, whispered confessions, joyous exclamations, and sweet dreams. With a voice ranging from a whisper to a call across teh miles, she's an oracle speaking to us all, channelling what sound like divine currents of the human condition, the part of the condition that is clearsighted and feeling, the condition that loves, the condition that hopes for happiness.

it's not meant to be a strife
it's not meant to be a struggle uphill

you're trying too hardv surrender
give yourself in
you're trying too hard
you're trying too hard

it's not meant to be a strife
it's not meant to be a struggle uphill
sweetly
to enjoy
it's not meant to be a strife
it's not meant to be a struggle uphill

it's warmer now: lean into it
unfold in a generous way
surrender
surrender
undo

Vespertine is filled with lovesongs, although they are hardly standard ballads. Instead, her songs speak from heart to heart, mind to mind, soul to soul. They are almost mythical in the stories they tell and the lyrics are poetry. In "A Hidden Place," she sings of a love she loves in secret and would like to keep in secret, hiding herself in his hair. "Cocoon" is another story altogether, the story of a girl lost in the wonder and joy of love, the repleteness of finding the boy to complete her:

who would have known
that a boy like him
possessed of magical sensitivity
would approach a girl like me
who carresses
cradles
his head in a bosom

Other songs espouse a hopeful, optimistic, forgiving view of the world. They seem to admonish the listener -- and yes, Björk does seem to be speaking directly to the listener at times -- to give up on bitterness and pessimism and press onward into the world, where somewhere there is goodness. We must stop trying so hard and simply let things happen, let things go, open ourselves to possibility. She will heal us, she absolves us, she kisses us with her voice, the magic of her sound, the angel choirs and harps. She has discover a goddess and passes on the blessing to the world.

i tumble down on my knees
fill the mouth with snow
the way
it
melts
i wish
to melt into you

No other Björk album has as much poetry in the lyrics as this one. You can almost imagining the lyrics appearing on a page, shot down straight from heaven by a divine poet. Not everything makes sense and much of the lyrics are open to interpretation. Some songs seem to be made up of fragments, while even the more coherent songs are sprinkled with asides and oddities.

a train of pearls, cabin by cabin
is shot precisely across an ocean
from a mouth
from a
from a mouth of a girl like me
to a boy
to a boy
to a boy

There is Björk speaking in her own private language of impressions and of course bits of Icelandic. She doesn't mind if she's not clear and straightforward, because she's expressed herself and in the end, Björk's greatest strength is her ability to express a creative gift unique in this world. We are very lucky to be able to share it and thus hear the sound of heaven.