Listen to an artist's music for long enough, and it becomes part of you - all the elements that make it distinctive, and how they come together, they get under your skin in a good way, so that there's at least a trace familiarity that already exists whenever you listen to their music, even when it's new.
Somehow, I don't think it was until I saw her perform live that I properly realised how significant Bjork's music was to me - or maybe it's just that the reminder that that set brought, after a period when the pull I'd felt towards her music had waned, confirmed something I'd already known (this was itself a good eight years ago now, so we're talking a lot of history). It's kind of surprising really, given that I already well knew how much I'd internalised all of those first four albums (Debut, Post, Homogenic, Vespertine) and the number of her songs that I counted amongst my favourites (especially, especially "Hyper-ballad"), plus the various associations that I'd built up with her music - but there you go.
Anyway, point is, Bjork is a major figure for me - I've taken a lot of her music to heart over the years, and it has come to feel very intimately connected with many parts of me. But I haven't kept up with her over recent years - the last couple that I listened to left me underwhelmed, and I think I've missed one or two since, and so coming to Vulnicura it's felt a bit like I've had to re-learn how to listen to Bjork, and in the process I've been rediscovering both the ways in which she demands attention and challenges the listener and the pleasures and rewards that come with those things.
Across the album's nine long songs, only one - the rapturously lovely opener "Stonemilker" - strikes me as immediately accessible. The others all take work. But when they open themselves up, they're all worth it - those knits of voice, strings and electronic sound brought together in ways that, if often alien, are always navigable and ultimately lead somewhere at once familiar and new.
Somehow, I don't think it was until I saw her perform live that I properly realised how significant Bjork's music was to me - or maybe it's just that the reminder that that set brought, after a period when the pull I'd felt towards her music had waned, confirmed something I'd already known (this was itself a good eight years ago now, so we're talking a lot of history). It's kind of surprising really, given that I already well knew how much I'd internalised all of those first four albums (Debut, Post, Homogenic, Vespertine) and the number of her songs that I counted amongst my favourites (especially, especially "Hyper-ballad"), plus the various associations that I'd built up with her music - but there you go.
Anyway, point is, Bjork is a major figure for me - I've taken a lot of her music to heart over the years, and it has come to feel very intimately connected with many parts of me. But I haven't kept up with her over recent years - the last couple that I listened to left me underwhelmed, and I think I've missed one or two since, and so coming to Vulnicura it's felt a bit like I've had to re-learn how to listen to Bjork, and in the process I've been rediscovering both the ways in which she demands attention and challenges the listener and the pleasures and rewards that come with those things.
Across the album's nine long songs, only one - the rapturously lovely opener "Stonemilker" - strikes me as immediately accessible. The others all take work. But when they open themselves up, they're all worth it - those knits of voice, strings and electronic sound brought together in ways that, if often alien, are always navigable and ultimately lead somewhere at once familiar and new.
