Happy 20th Anniversary to Björk’s fourth studio album Vespertine, originally released August 27, 2001.
In October 2019, six months before the pandemic shook the world, my world was shaken even more violently. I was hospitalized with dangerously high blood pressure and diagnosed a few days later with a form of bone marrow cancer. I tell you this not to garner your pity, but to make a point (eventually!) about Björk’s album Vespertine. In reaction to my diagnosis, I purchased a record player as I had always wanted one and it seemed appropriate to soothe my soul with a treat—self-medication via vinyl, if you will.
As well as copious Stevie Wonder records, one of my first purchases was Vespertine. My imagined idyll of sitting comfortably as the vinyl spun, lost in the music, necessitated albums that deserved that treatment. Björk’s fourth album was one that sprang to my mind immediately as it offered succor in two ways. Firstly, I thought it would sound amazing with the extra depth and dimension a vinyl pressing might provide and, secondly, because it maintained such an intimate, all-enveloping feeling of immersion.
But my relationship with the album goes further back. I remember very clearly where I got the album from (it was one of three that arrived courtesy of the short-lived, offshore bargain shop CDWow one day during the summer of 2001). And given how many albums I have bought in my lifetime, its impact on me must have been sizeable for me to remember that fact.
Approximately four years later and the album was part of my life again, as I revealed to my new girlfriend (now, my wife) the depths of my love for music and how seriously I take it. My CD player/hi-fi was beyond saving and so I embarked upon buying another one. Marching in to see row upon row of possible machines, I pulled out a small selection of CDs to test. My future wife’s face became permanently etched on my mind with a look that was 90% “what the fuck?!” and 10% admiration—she had figured they were all the same and that testing was pointless. Vespertine was one of the handful I tested, its crystalline beauty seemed perfect to weed out the good players from the bad.
Vespertine was forged in the twin fires of a burgeoning new relationship (with artist Matthew Barney) and as an escape from the professional discomfort of working with Lars Von Trier on his film Dancer In The Dark (2000). Both influences can be sharply felt throughout, as she captures the intimacy and sexual frisson of a new relationship and produces music of an intensely personal nature as a reaction to the hours of grueling acceptance of the role she played out to award-winning effect.
Initial ideas were tentatively titled Domestika, as Björk sought to capture the homely and comforting existence of domestic life. This can be heard in the adoption of household sounds as the basis for some of the songs—the cracking of ice, the shuffling flick of playing cards. She had also tired of the big beats that dominated her previous work and opted instead for hushed, whispered snatches of vocals with electronic bleeps, whirs and pulses.
Listen to the Album:
Furthermore, Björk had become acutely aware of the new technology associated with downloading music and used only instruments that would not be compromised in any way by the inevitable downloading that would unite listener and artist. So, she used harps, clavinets, strings and even used custom built music boxes—anything that would remain as it was recorded once the files were transferred for download.
Above all though, it was beautiful. All the ingredients that ensured the required homeliness resulted in an album that embraces and exhilarates at every turn.
And yet, I only listen to the album during four or five months of the year, and it seems ridiculous to be writing this anniversary piece during the summer (however typically British the summer may be), as I identify it so closely with the autumn and winter months. The album manages to be simultaneously cold and warm—the aural equivalent of plunging in the virgin snow and then recovering in front of a roaring log fire. It is a visceral and unique experience that is never lessened by repeated listens.
Vespertine is the very definition of an album with no skips—not just because every song is vital and filled with beauty, but also because it would just seem, well, rude to listen to any song in isolation or in the “wrong” order. It is (seemingly) built from a thousand different strands of sound and to tear the fabric of it by skipping or playing in a different order would be to denigrate the time and effort put into the artful construction of it.
Trying to distil the beauty into a tribute of this length is almost impossible, but “Hidden Place” that opens the album is emblematic of all the things that make it so special. The opening lyrics reveal that rush of new love: “Through the warmest cord of care / Your love was sent to me / I’m not sure what to do with it / Or where to put it / I’m so close to tears / And so close to / Simply calling you up / And simply suggesting / We go to that hidden place.”
As she sings those words, a ululating electronic bass throbs, percussion chirps, flickers and choral backing vocals swirl around to create a concoction of purest love. Love turns to physical intimacy on the charmingly explicit “Cocoon” before the closest thing we get to a big beat turns up on the opening to “It’s Not Up To You,” whose chorus is a dreamy delight with strings, harp and her uniquely surging vocals soaring skywards.
The same sense of upward trajectory is plotted on “Undo.” The final two-and-a-half minutes is a staggeringly wondrous piece of work, with magnificent choral voices and celestial strings ascending upwards for what feels like a weightless eternity. “Pagan Poetry” meanwhile revels in its pizzicato harp strings, as Björk’s voice runs wild and free like the wind, rising and falling in steep spirals of adoration while the backing vocals swoon dramatically.
The aforementioned music boxes turn up on the irrepressible elegant beauty of “Frosti” before my personal favorite (if I must choose one) “Aurora” takes center stage. The last remnants of the music boxes accompany another throbbing electronic bass line and plucked strings and the heavenly mélange of voices creates a magic carpet ride through the crisp arctic skies, bending every which way at will.
Elsewhere, there are wonders aplenty to imbibe. The lo-fi beat and lupine howl of Björk’s voice on “Heirloom,” the shiver-inducing strings at the conclusion of “Sun In My Mouth,” the eerie, foreboding feel of “An Echo A Stain” and the gradual climb to the restrained climax of “Harm Of Will.” The final act of the album is a jolly, even jaunty, celebration of unexpected love on “Unison,” as Björk reflects, “I thrive best hermit style / With a beard and a pipe / And a parrot on each side / But now I can’t do this without you / I never thought I would compromise.” As lyrics go, it is typically unique and somewhat unorthodox, but its power and wit are unmatched.
This album, by dint of its music and subject matter, replicates the giddy feelings of fresh love in ways that leave the listener dizzy and drunk on the beauty of the melody and the arrangements of strings, harps and the choral signatures. It never fails to stop me in my tracks when I listen to it.
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