Björk - Biophilia

Biophilia is easily Björk’s most ambitious project to date. While it’s easy to get distracted by the technological innovations that she has facilitated around it – the educational iPad apps alone may have far-reaching effects on future artistic endeavours – the fact remains: Biophilia is also Björk’s most musically potent record since 2004’s Medulla, and arguably since Homogenic back in 1997.

It begins unassumingly enough, the unhurried descending harp line that opens ‘Moon’ soon giving rise to tendrils of melody, with gradual accretions of texture blooming into some of her most luminous and pained vocal harmonies. Björk seems characteristically preoccupied with the hidden processes of the universe, whether that be crystal formations ‘spread out like my fingers’ (‘Crystalline’), the mystery of ‘Dark Matter’ or the sombre hymnal of ‘Cosmogony’. The clustered dissonance of ‘Hollow’ may stretch some listeners’ patience, but the artist mostly seems to have reached a reasonable balance between pop accessibility and experimental excess.

'Biophilia' loosely translates as ‘love of the world’. While Björk’s lyrics are indeed saturated with a sense of wonder at the mind-boggling forces that permit life to continue, she uses much of the geo- or biological imagery as a metaphor for human processes. Take, for instance, the soft optimism of a virus wooing its way into a cell (‘Virus’), or the grinding dirge of ‘Mutual Core’, a relationship being refigured as the inevitable drift of tectonic plates, with Björk creating a lyrical synthesis between the forces that compel the human heart and the molten dynamo that drives the planet.

A brilliant return from one of Iceland’s few remaining sustainable exports.


First published in The Brag, Iss. 437 November 7th 2011

Cass McCombs - Humor Risk

Cass McCombs does things his way: if he feels like abstaining from the circus of the music media cycle then he will; if he wants to write a screenplay awash with semi-prophetic rant (think Jodorowsky’s Holy Mountain – an excerpt is available on his absurdly clunky website) then he will; if he feels like releasing two collections of unobtrusively original songs written in his comfortingly familiar yet bizarrely idiosyncratic style within the space of six months, then he damn well will.

Taking its name from a Marx Brothers’ film, Humor Risk has been touted as the sunnier counterpart to the claustrophobic Wit’s End released back in April. Though it’d be a stretch to call it optimistic, first single ‘Robin Egg Blue’ is easily the most upbeat track McCombs has written since ‘Dream Come True Girl’ from fourth album Catacombs, a levity perhaps stemming from a letting go of former melancholy, with McCombs admitting “what’s done is done”. Unlike the uncanny stasis towards which Wit’s End groped its way, most songs here possess some measure of energy and groove, whether it be the grunge of ‘Love Thine Enemy’, the supple warmth of ‘The Living Word’ or the mid-tempo rock of highlight ‘The Same Thing’.

But McCombs seems incapable of ignoring inner darkness completely. Straddling the album’s mid-point, ‘To Every Man His Chimera’ provides the doom-laden rock on which the other songs pivot, McCombs crying with a strangled yelp “it’s you again”, as though catching sight of his own steel-eyed doppelganger in the mirror. It’s the exception however, ‘Mariah (Sketch)’ closing the record with a tender, lo-fi beauty.

If most pop music is Rice Bubbles, then Cass McCombs writes musical quinoa.


First published in The Brag, Iss. 437, November 7th 2011