eMusic Review
Vespertine is Björk's most serene and sensuous record. An album primarily about domestic and sexual bliss, it features some of the most intoxicatingly beautiful songs she has written: "Cocoon," "Aurora," "Heirloom." "Pagan Poetry" may be the single greatest track she has ever recorded.
The Björkian soundfield is much as it always is: skittering rhythms, warm keyboard tones, discreet "laptronic" pulses, plinking harps and swooshing strings, a general meshing of organic and synthetic textures. But her unique sonic palette is harnessed here in the service of hushed awe: womblike intimacy and occasional ecstasy.
Her extraordinary voice never sounded better. The urgent passion of "Pagan Poetry" is thrilling. The tremulous breathiness of her vocal on "Cocoon" — a song of sexual adoration for her artist husband Matthew Barney — is so vulnerably naked it's almost shocking: "He slides inside, half-awake, half asleep…"
After 1997's somber, elemental Homogenic, Vespertine is whispered, glimmeringly pretty. Certain tracks — "Undo," "It's Not Up to You," "An Echo, A Stain," "Sun in My Mouth," the closing "Unison" — are more drifting and hypnotic, less melodically arresting than others. But the floating mood of semi-somnambulism, of almost narcotic dreaminess, is maintained throughout. As she sings on "Undo," "it's not meant… read more »
