This isn't really where it all began. It all began with the Sugarcubes, really, a few years earlier, back in the bad old eighties. Then Bjork's emotive ululations were wed to band-mate Einar's serio-comic, non sequitor rants. The 'cubes were more rock than pop, more weird than serious, but somehow always intriguing. And nothing they did could cover up the unique star-style of lead-singer/party ringleader bjork.
So who expected, back then, that when she went solo she'd go so far afield? Rock and pop were preserved, but transformed, as Bjork's first solo album went startlingly techno, minimal, electro. Others were doing this back then, but they were wedding their style to soul and disco rhythms. Not so Bjork and collaborators, including Nelee Hooper, who were inventing something like trip-hop, but not exactly that, either. Some genius somewhere seems to have realized that Bjork's unusual, powerful instrument was ideally suited to stark electronic frames, and yet the emotive power of her performance doesn't really leave anything too stark for long. Bjork is techno-organic, a cyperpunk novel in action, with the latest technology employed not to run from life, but to live it more deeply, to explore it with augmented senses and "big time sensuality."
Debut thus becomes the perfect title for a re-birth, a new beginning as a solo artist with a lot to say and the craft to say it her way. And what does she tell us? Well, that she's an astute observer of "Human Behaviour," a scientist-magician-muse all in one. She's also "Violently Happy," (because she loves), and more than ready to indulge in that "Big Time Sensuality." In a bouncy, charmingly and amateurishly recorded party number, she lets us in on a bit of the controlled chaos that proves "There's More to Life than This."
But those driving, upbeat numbers are contrasted with many more somber creations. "One Day" is a stately, poised self-examination. "Like Someone in Love" is a wistful ballad. "Crying" is all about the messy hurt feelings that come from loving someone too much, while "Anchor Song" is an odd, underwater exploration of boundaries and haunting dream imagery.
And then there's the most beautiful song here, the lilting and suggestive "Venus as a Boy," which merges sexual desire with self-identity to explain as well as anything else Bjork's fiesty, feral and free creative muse. This first solo album is arguably her best, and certainly among the best and most startlingly original albums of the 90s.
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