HOW DID WE GET HERE: Homogenic - Björk

Iceland is a funny country.
What’s going on up there? Do they have a government? Jobs? Do the people there laugh, smile, and cry, just the same as us? Iceland remains one of the few real mysteries left for humans to ponder over. Every night, all across Planet Earth, kids with vivid imaginations dream of snowclad cityscapes, frozen football fields, and a McDonalds where the burgers are made of ice and you have to eat them really fast or they’ll disappear and then you’ve wasted five icepounds on nothing. Also, the McDonalds is called Cool McDonalds.
 
I know what you’re thinking: does Cool McDonalds really exist? Or is it simply the naïve fantasy of ADHD children? Unfortunately, there’s no way for us to know for sure. But there is one lead that we have - one thread that hasn’t yet been sufficiently pulled, and I am here today to pull it.

In the 1990s, the civilised world was contacted by Iceland for the first time. Entire nations held their breath as the diverse peoples of Earth waited on tenterhooks to see what the mysterious Icelanders had to say. Unfortunately, their message arrived via CD, and that’s not as cool as vinyl, so interest immediately dissipated. The CD was completely ignored by the world. And when nine more CDs arrived after that, no one ever bothered listening to those either, assuming that they must only contain something simple, like the soft sounds of snow crunching underfoot, or the sharp whistle of wind in a blizzard. The world stopped watching, and the children of Earth stopped caring about that mystery to the North, their dreams returning to the videogame Fortnite, and Prime Energy Drink, and The Knife Man.

But I have in my possession a copy of the third CD sent to us by Iceland, and my sources at Bulgarian Mossad have assured me that all is not quite what was assumed. I’ve been promised that there are lessons to be learned, secrets to be told, and music to be judged. So, as I hover my one smug finger over the play button on my DOLBY Digital CD player and Radio, I say to the people of Planet Earth:

“Hello world, *smirks*, meet my good friend: Ireland”

Hunter
Okay I’m gonna break kayfabe immediately because What The Fuck.

I think it’s very easy growing up in western countries to develop and collect small, almost innocuous, and mostly harmless ideas about people from countries other than your own. Through no testing, or education, or real good reason, you’ll put entire nations, millions of people, into small boxes of your own understanding. Your brain will latch onto one piece of information you received from an episode of the Simpsons or an Indiana Jones film and now that picture is painted inside your mind forever. Germans make techno music. Australians only have Didgeridoos. Any music from Nigeria is likely to be outside of my taste range. These paintings are finished, perfected, and hung up in the gallery of your mind, in a place where you’re not likely to ever give them a second glance. In fact, the only time you’re ever really going to think of them again is when someone new enters your mind, wanders right into the dusty gallery in the back of your head, and rips one of the paintings up, throwing it on the floor and spitting on it.

About a decade ago I had one such moment when I stumbled upon a YouTube documentary about the peculiar story of a Nigerian musician called William Onyeabor. An enigmatic character and committed hermit (one story describes him shooting at a child who knocked on his door in the hopes of meeting him), he nevertheless recorded and produced some of the most incredible Afro-funk disco tracks that this uncultured music writer has ever heard. Listening to his song Fantastic Man completely rewired my brain, and I’d like to think that it went some way towards deprogramming these unconscious biases and assumptions that I’d picked up in my childhood.

I imagine that all the way back in 1997, the release of Homogenic did something similar for a lot of first-time listeners who had no idea who Björk was, and who had previously asked themselves that same question about Iceland that was on everybody’s lips: What the fuck are they cooking up there?

Turns out it’s something quite unexpected.
6/10

Jóga
Earlier tonight, while asking friends for suggestions for my next album review, one of them said something along the lines of:

“It has to be something that Matt specifically will think is bad, like it has to be too weird for him”.

And this song is definitely weird and a bit outside of my musical comfort zone, but the issue here is that it’s not weird in the way that much of Kid A was (bad, boring), it’s weird in the way that I simply cannot imagine a scenario that I would be in where this is an appropriate piece of music for me to be listening to. It is beautiful. Björk’s voice is incredible. The strings are great, and the composition of it is really interesting and new to me. But most of my music listening happens on the twenty-five-minute bus journey home from work Monday to Friday, and I cannot justify listening to something like this on that trip.

I work at an insurance company. I do Excel all day. Of course I make jokes with coworkers about killing myself, but my job is mainly alright. Comfortable. Too comfortable for a track like this. To listen to a song like this on your way home from work and not feel weird about it, your job needs to be like, international spy. Or Harold Shipman.

Unravel
This track is an incredible testament to the power of an accent combined with outrageous natural ability. The lyrics are hardly Shakespearean in their scope, but the delivery of each line by Björk, with the words seemingly dragged up unwillingly from a pit somewhere inside her heart, each syllable taking her breath away, is phenomenal. She sells every line like it’s the last of the night, and I’m buying all I can get.

Bachelorette
I’m a tree that grows hearts
One for each that you take
You’re the intruder’s hand
I’m the branch that you break

The grand orchestral movements, the pain in her voice, the dramatic, filmic lyrics. I’m now of the unassailable opinion that if Björk did a Bond song, it would be so good and so inspiring that the actual film would be good instead of shit, and that both Björk and Stephen Graham (Bond) would win Oscars.

Before writing this section, I Googled “James Bond Björk” to see if I was just a fucking idiot and this had already happened, and was delighted to see that, no, not only am I not an idiot, but other people have had this thought too, before me, with YouTube user ‘mattis1981’ posting a video replacing the Spectre opening track with Björk’s Play Dead. And to absolutely no one’s surprise: it rocks. Unfortunately, the studios are too cowardly to give me what I want. Before they do, Björk must kill Adele in unarmed combat.

All Neon Like
This is the first time I’ve been bored, which is quite good going really. The beat sounds like an interlude track on a mid-career Kanye album (derogatory), and the vocals don’t really carry the song, despite the inclusion of the lyric:

Nourish, Nourish
Your turtleheart

No fucking clue what that means. I guess if I had a voice as good as Björk’s I would probably spend all of my time recording myself singing the most stupid bullshit possible and seeing whether people digested it as sincere or not. Maybe that’s what she’s doing here. Or maybe I’m mocking a line that is deeply personal and meaningful to her. Luckily, they don’t have the internet in Iceland, so she’ll never know.

5 Years
Alright, here we go. This is the good stuff.

What an awful song. Why would you do this to me Björk? Why would you do this to the world? There’s something there, too. Below the noise, below the horrible, horrible noise, there’s an actual song, but it’s buried beneath record scratches and the sound of explosions from an 8bit videogame.

I read online that this what Icelandic parents beatbox to their newborns to make sure that they grow up just as weird and angry as they are, and suddenly everything about it makes a little bit more sense. That being said: personally, I wouldn’t ever beatbox at a baby, but who am I to criticise a culture so different from my own.

Immature – Mark Bell’s Version
Back on track, this song is the music version of legible. Edible perhaps. I don’t fucking like it but at least I can listen to it without wincing.

Call it ironic, but the thing I don’t like about this song is actually that it feels so undeveloped compared to some of the earlier tracks. The chorus doesn’t really build to anything and the lyrics are so simple and sincere without being compelling.

I don’t know what it means by Mark Bell’s version but I hope he’s happy with himself.

Alarm Call
Laughing out loud in the club at:

I’m no fucking Buddhist
But this is enlightenment

I have no idea what’s going on in Björk’s head but, whatever it is, it’s very special. Barring that last track, most of her lyrics are written with the unique point of view and charm of someone who really does have a generational mind. The specificity of each line feels like they’re ripped straight from the pages of a deranged woman’s diary, and that is compelling. Also, I hate to be gender-essentialist, but it’s worth noting that lyrics which sound like they’re ripped straight from the pages of a deranged man’s diary are very, very different, and altogether much less interesting than this. A guy in a band who is genuinely tapped will write lyrics like:

I want to be inside your flesh
I want to scream into your heart
My feet are wolves
There’s a devil in my fists
I did 9/11

Whereas with Björk it’s just:

I want to be on a mountain top
With a radio and good batteries
And play a joyous tune
And free the human race
From suffering

Fellas, they’ve got us beat.

Pluto
Listening to this song makes me feel like I’m dancing in a European sex-club with my extremely androgynous friends, enjoying myself without a smile on my face, completely unaware that I’m about to become an innocent casualty in a shootout involving John Wick.

It's not really my thing at all, unless someone wants to invite me to the scenario above, in which case: Drugs Please.

All is Full of Love – Howie’s Version
First thirty seconds sounds like she put farts through autotune.

I really like the message of this song, in a very deeply sincere way. All is full of love, and it’s up to us all to open those doors inside ourselves to receive it, whether it’s the love of our friends and our family, the love of a door held open by a stranger, or the love of a music review written by a very young man who honestly intended no offence at all.

It seems we all had Iceland pegged wrong, didn’t we? God we’re so silly, but ultimately! Blameless. No one can blame us, or me, or you, for the things that we said in this review. We can’t be held accountable is what I’m saying, because at the end of the day, all is full of love, and sometimes some people express love in a way that they think is okay, even if maybe the general consensus disagrees. But the love is still there, is it not? Is there not love in Lennie’s large hands, even as he crushes the rabbit? Is there not love in the tiny fingers of a child, popping bubbles as they rise through the air?
Intention is everything. So, even as you pen handwritten letters to the Icelandic embassy, explaining to them first what the internet is, and second what a music review is, and finally what the contents of this particular review are, please just remember what Björk said: All is full of love.

5/10 I really hated that 5 Years song.