bjork

A Week With Bjork's "Volta": Day 1

22 May 2007
tell your friends... tell your friends...

Words by Kyle Smith // Illustration by Laura Park

I bought Volta and was offered a free poster of its ridiculous cover art. The salesman then told me Björk had been in the same record store just a day prior. Man, I wonder what she was wearing? Hopefully something akin to the bubble fruit suit she dons on the cover and on my new poster, a photograph in which she looks eerily like an airbrushed Nelly Furtado. The whimsy hints at Volta‘s playfulness, and it’s also frustrating, as the image of Björk is just a sticker holding the album together — unlike Beck’s The Information, this sticker serves a functional purpose in that it keeps the physical album closed. This makes it less of a gimmick and more of an annoyance. Really, its just inconsiderate.

I’m going into such detail because I want to delay discussing Volta as much as possible. I find most of Björk’s music to be impenetrable before revealing itself to you, almost instrument-by-instrument, measure-by-measure. “Sonic landscape” might be a buzzphrase, but Björk crafts objects and structures with her songs. All of “Earth Intruders” sounds like a flyby of the construction of some futuristic monument with foot soldiers milling about the grounds; “Wanderlust” feels the same, with huge, pained horns and Björk’s passion.

“Earth Intruders” opens with a steady march before the ever-hyped Timbaland beats arrive. It’s propulsive, punctuated by sonic cameos throughout the track: a Fisher-Price ditty, sharp synth moans, and my favorite: that has to be a sample of Linkin Park’s “Numb” at the 2:45 mark. Maybe Tim grew bitter at the song’s ubiquity following the Jay-Z collab and seminal Miami Vice teaser; regardless of your feelings on nü-metal, those guys can write a hook. Even if it’s lifted, it’s one of the catchier sonic moments of “Earth Intruders,” and the rest of the song seems mostly devoid of Timbaland’s now-ubiquitous tropes. Consensus seems to be that Timbaland’s contributions here are underwhelming at best, as if we’re supposed to expect some seat-clearing banger that demands cheers at high school proms and spilled drinks by careless club-goers. I don’t have intimate knowledge of Timbaland’s sessions for Volta, but let’s pretend he kept bench pressing and she kept sculpting miniature whales out of vaseline. Forget Mayweather-De La Hoya II — PPV should pick up Timbaland vs. Matthew Barney.

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Shannon McArdle



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