Releasing a greatest hits collection after just a handful
of albums always seems a suspicious marketing plot,
and usually denotes either a change of direction, or
a change of label, sometimes both at once. In this case
however, Björk herself was at the source of the
project, confessing that, after recording Vespertine,
she felt she had reached a point she had dreamed of
since she was a child. She continues: “Now I feel
I have got a clean slate, a new beginning to start all
over again. I feel like I am at a crossroads, so it
felt like the right time to put out a selection, or
more of a retrospect, of the story so far.” Although
Björk is only 37, the story in question already
stretches over twenty five years.
Raised in a communal household living on the outskirts
of Reykjavik, young Björk Gudmundsdottir grew up
listening to Icelandic jazz, rock and poetry and traditional
tales. At the age of eleven, she released a hugely successful
album of traditional Icelandic songs and adaptations.
Two years later, she started forming punk bands, mixing
with anarchists and art students. In 1987, she met Einer
Örn and Siggi Baldurson, and went on to form The
Sugarcubes. Snapped up by hip label One Little Indian,
the band rapidly became Iceland’s premier rock
band and best export, releasing a first album, Life’s
Too Good, a year later. Five years and three albums
later, The Sugarcubes went their separate ways, and
Björk, who was getting increasingly interested
in technology, as highlighted in the band’s last
project, the remix album It’s-It, moved
to London and developed a friendship with Graham Massey,
who invited her to perform two songs on 808 States’s
Ex:El album. She followed with Debut,
produced by Soul II Soul and Massive Attack collaborator
Nellee Hooper, and two years later, Post,
on which she also collaborated with Massey, Howie B
and Tricky. On Homogenic, released in 1997,
her third solo album, she for the first time got involved
in the production work, helped by legendary LFO
main man Mark Bell, and carried most of the writing
process, two sides of her personality that she developed
even further on last year’s magnificent Vespertine.
She also ventured on the big screen, playing the leading
role in the beautiful Dancer In The Dark, directed
by Lars Von Trier, for which she won the prestigious
Prix d’Interpretation at the 2001 Cannes Film
Festival, the film winning the Palme d’Or.
The retrospective of her career is made up of two very
distinct projects. Greatest Hits features fourteen
tracks chosen by fans who voted for their favourite
song on her web site, plus one previously unreleased
song, It’s In Our Hand. Family Tree
on the other hand is a beautifully presented box
set containing five 3inch CDs with a total or 23 tracks
split into three distinct categories depicting three
aspects of Björk’s work over the years: Roots,
Beats and Strings, together with a
5inch CD greatest hits chosen by Björk herself.
Complementing these CDs is a booklet containing a selection
of lyrics, focusing on the songstress’s fourth
aspect of her work: Words.
Greatest Hits predictably features some of
Björk’s most popular songs (Human Behaviour,
Big Time Sensuality, Venus As A Boy
or the slightly tired Army Of Me). Considering
the involvement of fans in this side of the project,
it is surprising that no lesser known track made it
to the final listing. The album is however as brilliant
as can be expected, despite sometimes taking songs out
of context. The greatest hits selected by Björk
provides a better balance between well known songs (Venus
As A Boy, Bachelorette which shows her
at her most dramatic, or Jóga) and album
excerpts (You’ve Been Flirting Again,
Scatterheart, It’s Not Up To You),
and ultimately appears to reflect the multiple side
of her personality in a far better way. The most interesting
side of the project remains the five 3inch CDs. The
first section, Roots, collects some of Björk’s
solo material together with two early Sugarcubes songs,
Ammæli and Mamma, one dating
back to her days with Kukl (Fuglar) and a little
known solo track from 1980, Glóra).
The second half of Roots focuses on stripped
down versions of songs written between 1995 (Cover
Me) and 2001 (Mother Heroic). These versions
sometimes give a complete different light on the songs,
as on the beautiful Generous Palmstroke, recorded
live at the end of last year in Rome where Björk’s
singing is surrounded by swirls of harps. Jóga
is stripped from Mark Bell’s organic beats to
reveal its complex and fragile string orchestration.
Beats is the most overlooked section here,
only featuring four tracks, two recorded with Graham
Massey (The Modern Things and Karvel)
and two with Mark Bell (I Go Humble –
Mark Bell used a reworked instrumental version of this
song, renamed Shove Piggy Shove, on LFO’s
second album, Advance – and Nature
Is Ancient). The selection of Strings
tracks is more prominent and offers a mixture of live
and studio recordings made with the Brodsky Quartet
between 1999 and 2000 including amazingly delicate versions
of Cover Me, The Anchor Songs, All
Neon Like and I’ve Seen It All,
plus powerful renditions of Bachelorette and
Play Dead.
If Family Tree doesn’t reflect enough
Björk’s work prior to her successful solo
career, the first Roots CD is probably the
most exiting part of the whole project as it maps out
the basics of the four following CDs. More than Greatest
Hits, Family Tree sums up the major piece
of work completed by Björk to date, how her talent
has served her singular personality, and is an essential
addition to any decent record collection.
Greatest Hits 4.5/5 / Family Tree 5/5
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