I would like to hereby declare 1997 as "The Year of Great Albums that I Stupidly Missed the First Time Around." While it's true that there's a lot of stuff from all over the late 90's that I've discovered as I discovered quality artists later in their careers and began to explore some of those newfound favorite artists' back catalogues, the year with the most glaring omissions when I compare the list of "Stuff I Really Liked Back Then" to the albums I'd consider the "Best of" a particular year now has got to be 1997. This trend probably started when I snubbed Sixpence None the Richer's vastly underappreciated self-titled album until nearly a year after its release, finally discovering its subtle goodness in late '98. Then, after Y2K, I became a fan of U2 and Radiohead, at which point I discovered the viciously maligned Pop (an extremely misunderstood great album if ever I've heard one) and the almost universally acclaimed OK Computer (yeah, I can't argue with that one).

But it wasn't until 2007 that I finally got into Bjork, as documented in a few reviews I've already written of her work in the 21st century. And lo and behold, Bjork had a great album released in this "Year of Lost Albums", too. It was called Homogenic. And apparently, it changed some people's perception of music itself. I wouldn't go that far regarding its effect on me, but I'll tell you, there are some solid, catchy, and yet relentlessly creative songs on this sucker. It's formidable enough to make me wonder what the heck I ever saw in Volta (my proper introduction to Bjork's world), and addictive enough to make me immediately understand why a lot of Bjork fans cite it as their favorite album.

So what did Bjork do in the year 1997 to warrant such praise? Put quite simply, she tried to set the sights and stories of her native Iceland to music. Homogenic is a beautiful and yet violent record, a place where icy, soothing string sections collide headlong with harsh explosions of electronic magma. It's an oil-and-water proposition that, by all accounts, shouldn't have worked. But those who were able to wrap their ears around the dissonant collision of ancient and modern sounds actually found that underneath it all, Bjork had an extremely keen ear for a memorable melodic hook. Those who actually followed Bjork's career chronologically instead of the back-asswards way I got into her probably saw this coming when the playful club tunes and lovelorn ballads of 1993's Debut started to take on more of a devious form on 1995's Post, but for me, Homogenic was a new world, almost completely unlike the later experiments of Vespertine (consistently mellow and wintry), Volta (an exercise in utter musical whiplash) and Medulla (the biggest "WTF?" experiment with the human voice in all of recorded history). I might still hold Vespertine as my personal favorite because it just so happened to come along when I was in desperate need of a major chill pill, but I would never argue with anyone who cited Homogenic as the obvious critical favorite. For most of its 10 tracks, it's simply unbeatable.

Notice that I said "most". Also notice that I'm heaping praise on this album while only awarding it 4 stars. Why is that? Well, to be truthful, I think the most fascinating sonic experiments on Homogenic are found in its first half, and then it starts to deflate ever-so-slightly towards the end. There's nothing remotely approaching a "bad" song on the album, but it has the unfortunate distinction of tacking on the only two experiments that didn't quite work at the end, and those two experiments don't sound like they belong side-by-side at all, much less in the company of better recordings. I still like them and listen to them. But they almost feel like a look back at Post and a sneak peek at Vespertine than quintessential components of Homogenic. So that's why the album loses that final star (it'd be four and a half stars if Epinions allowed it). Sorry if that annoys pretty much every other Bjork fan in existence, but I'm sticking to my guns on this one, and you'll see why when I get to the individual song reviews.

And I promise to stop rambling in generalities and get to the specifics now.

Hunter
I thought I could organise freedom
How Scandinavian of me...
10 years before Bjork managed to identify her "Wanderlust" by its true name, she explored her desire for exploration in this trippy, stuttering symphony of a song that deftly mixes skidding electronic beats with staccato strings and, of all things, an accordion. It's the kind of song whose power sneaks up on you, peers over your shoulder, and then throws a bag over your head and drags you off into the mysterious night, rather than showing up in plain sight with a gun to your face. Bjork's longing for the hunt might have something to do with gender reversal, wanting to go out and find love and club it over the head and drag it home, caveman-style, or it might just be about an uncontrollable desire to figure out the source of one's uncontrollable desire. Either way, it's a deeply compelling song and a brilliant way to start off the album.

Joga
Emotional landscapes, they puzzle me
The riddle gets solved
And you push me up to this state of emergency...
The first verse of this song is nothing but strings and voice, with the distant electronics working their way in gradually, like streaks of light from a meteor shower showing up briefly and then dissipating in the night sky. Then it gets more industrious as it goes, slowly introducing chaos to the order - and it's really a song that celebrates the chaos, as the thumping and crackling rhythms begin to shake the song's foundation like little faultlines, eventually opening up harsh, dissonant cracks in the middle of the song where the machinery underneath takes over completely. "This state of emergency is where I want to be", Bjork sings over the slow-mo aural backdrop of a volcano exploding. These words are spoken almost as if to comfort a friend, not to offer pat answers to her problems, but to offer the thought that life's emergencies might just be the crucible in which the human soul is truly formed.

Unravel
The devil collects it with a grin
Our love, in a ball of yarn
He'll never return it...
We get to see Bjork in her most naked and vulnerable state in this slow, sad ballad about love lost... or at least love being away on a really long trip. Despite the song really just having a few simple lines about how Bjork's heart falls to pieces, unraveling like a ball of yarn whenever the man she loves is away, it's the music that really defines the emotional struggle taking place. Glowing but distant synth tones resemble foghorns blaring in the distance, and the electronics clunking around underneath are sluggish, like oil derricks slowly trying to lift themselves from the muck, only to plunge back into the muck again and repeat the process. The manipulation of sounds is brilliant here, especially the little "tumbling" sound that the synths make again and again, representing a woman desperate to lift her spirits, but feeling them drop uncontrollably with every pained sigh of longing, as she resigns herself to thinking, "When you come back, we'll have to make new love". There's a reason why Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke cited this as his favorite song. While he might have a pretty bizarre concept of beauty (or at least, a radically different one than I have), I definitely can't argue with him here.

Bachelorette
I'm a path of cinders
Burning under your feet
You're the one who walks me
I'm your one way street...
The album's true masterstroke comes with this brooding, cinematic song, with a relentless melody, bounding piano and swooping strings that may as well be the very definition of "drama". These are the passionate, slightly unhinged, and thoroughly jealous words of a woman who fears being jilted and doomed to a life of singleness - she makes her case about why her man will suffer woefully if he ever dares to leave her behind, and it comes across beautifully and yet viciously at the same time, by way of a complicated string of analogies describing the communication breakdown between the two of them. It's five minutes of pure brilliance, and it definitely ranks among my Top 5 Bjork songs, if I were to have to narrow down such a difficult list. ("Wanderlust" and "Pagan Poetry" would probably be my #1 and #2.) If this song isn't enough to convince you that Bjork is a genius, take a look at the eye-popping spectacle of a music video that she concocted with director Michel Gondry (also known for the larger-than-life flights of visual fancy in the film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind). Its self-referential narrative layers are guaranteed to mess with your mind in the most delightful way possible.

All Neon Like
Not 'til you halo all over me, I'll come over
Not 'til it shimmers 'round your skull, I'll be yours...
Appropriately for a song titled after a noble gas, this song has an effervescent glow to it, a "halo" of sound that hangs hazily around Bjork's seemingly detached vocals - it's one of those compositions where Bjork seems to be wandering away from any concept of rhythm until a delightfully idiosyncratic rhythm track shows up to give it context. With that element added in, the song gains an eerie, stilted sort of movement that reminds me of a game of Space Invaders that one might play on an old-school Atari console. While the odd combination of sounds assaulting the ear is pretty darn cool, this might be the point where the album turns from "total genius" to just "pretty darn good", since the song doesn't really pick up a lot more steam after the initial introduction of the beat, and it hangs around for almost six minutes. Plus, some of Bjork's comments later in the song about wanting to heal you by cutting a slit in your throat are just plain creepy.

5 Years
I dare you to take me on
I dare you to show me your palms
What's so scary, not a threat in sight
You just can't handle, you can't handle love...
Gee, do you think some guy jilted Bjork while she was in the process of writing this album? That's the impression that I get from tracks like "Bachelorette" and especially this one. I would define this track as "Bjork does Alanis Morissette" - the intentionally junked-up beats and the near-growl that creeps into Bjork's tone of voice at times remind me very much of what Ms. Morissette might sound like if she dropped all pretense of mainstream radio-friendliness. (You know, like she did a year after Bjork released this album, on Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie.) Here, Bjork plays chicken with a man whom she accuses of not being able to handle love - she double dog-dares him to take on the challenge and prove her dead wrong. This song definitely won't win over anyone who already finds the eccentricities of Bjork's voice to be a bit off-putting, but for those of us who have gotten used to her little quirks, I have to say it's a pretty stellar vocal performance.

Immature
How could I be so immature
To think he could replace
The missing elements in me
How extremely lazy of me...
The abrasive "5 Years" comes crashing headlong into this soothing, piano-driven, space-age lounge track that honestly reminds me of some of the more out-of-the-way compositions in the back half of Bjork's Debut. That's not a bad thing, but this quieter rumination on Bjork's lack of maturity for expecting a man to complete here falls a bit short due to a lack of lyrics. I might feel a bit differently if I understood Icelandic, since parts of the song are in that language, but I have a bit of a pet peeve with songs that mix and match languages like this, because almost none of her audience is guaranteed to understand the entirety of it. I think I'd prefer it if the entire song were in Icelandic, honestly. That said, it's a lovely mid-tempo track with more of Bjork's vocal gutsiness showing through here and there, and a light but solid groove throughout.

Alarm Call
I want to go on a mountaintop
With a radio and good batteries
Play a joyous tune
And free the human race from suffering...
Speaking of groove - this song's got it in spades, becoming the closest thing Bjork's done to a bona fide R&B track with its slick, junk-in-the-trunk beat, glitched up just enough to remind us it's Bjork, but still feeling hella good to crank up and really work the bass on your stereo. This is Bjork's attempt to wake up the world, to shake people out of their fear-motivated dull routines and declare a liberating message to the world at large. It's defiant and yet sunnily optimistic at the same time. I love it all the way through, except for the jarring line where Bjork blurts out, "I'm no f*cking Buddhist, but this is enlightenment." I get what she's saying there, but if I were a Buddhist, I think I'd be kind of offended at the implications there. Plus the cursing just doesn't suit Bjork when she's normally much more creative with her vocabulary. But then she goes and wins me over again by singing the very sound of her alarm call as a looped background vocal, "Beep beep, beep beep, beep." She is just so charmingly odd, isn't she?

Pluto
Excuse me, but I just have to explode
Explode this body off me...
Here's the track that I think feels like a leftover experiment from Post (or, if I'm feeling a distinct lack of generosity, Telegram). It's a rather monochromatic, visceral dance track that finds Bjork launching the tempo into outer space (a good thing) and delivering perhaps the most caustic, abrasive vocals of her entire career (not such a good thing - there's a fine line between sexy, playful shrieking and just plain out nails-on-chalkboard yowling). It seems catchy at first, with the rapid-fire electronic pulses creating an anti-melodic backdrop for the song as Bjork sings of an uncontrollable desire to just explode from all of the pressure she's been placed under, but quickly gets repetitive as each successive cry gets more and more distorted and irritating, after which the song just repeats the same looped elements until it slowly falls apart and finally just cuts off abruptly, which is an absolutely illogical way to lead into the album's final song. (Bjork would revisit a similar musical idea 10 years later, with Volta's defiant "Declare Independence", and for my money, that song achieved its goal much more convincingly.)

All Is Full of Love
You'll be given love
You'll be taken care of
You'll be given love
You have to trust it...
The musical backdrop to the album's final song is quite ethereal - a wash of echoing, exotic sounds that seems like it might just be what a departed soul might hear while floating through the clouds on its way to the afterlife. It's a final, peaceful statement, an assurance that the little details of life are permeated by love even when an individual feels utterly alone and lacking anything resembling it. I can't say that it's anything but beautiful, but it feels like the entire song is an intro to an imaginary climactic segment that never arrives. The complete lack of a beat might be the reason for this - apparently the song was originally mixed with a defining rhythm that made the song easier to follow, and if you pay attention you can still pick up the pattern to Bjork's melodies and her elated cries of "All is full of love!" - it's actually a great song to chill out to when you're in the mood. I'm just baffled that she chose to use this rhythm-deficient remix of the song as the "definitive album version" rather than the original mix - which, perplexingly, was the version released to radio, which later became the first track on her Greatest Hits disc due to an overwhelming number of votes from fans. I vastly prefer that version, even though I can sort of see the unorthodox beauty of this version. This one reminds me of some of the rhythm-free experiments in the back half of Vespertine, though it definitely leaves more of an impression than those songs did. I just don't feel that a song completely devoid of rhythm belongs on Homogenic, a record which is pretty much defined by its collision of "old-world" instrumentation with aggressive, computer generated percussion.

Part of me really hates to knock "Pluto" and especially "All Is Full of Love", which I know is a monolithic fan favorite in the Bjork continuum, but those are the two tracks (along with "Immature", to a lesser degree) that keep Homogenic from being a guaranteed home run. For its sheer inventiveness combined with its highly memorable mix of dissonance and tunefulness, especially within those ground-breaking first four tracks, it definitely deserves its place in the post-modern music pantheon. None of my complaints about it keep me from listening to this 11-year-old album just about as frequently as I listen to a lot of the recently released favorites vying for my limited time. Homogenic is certainly an ideal place to start if you're on the fence about Bjork. Just be aware that even at her best, Bjork's work can be a bit uneven.

ALBUM WORTH:
Hunter $2
Joga $2
Unravel $2
Bachelorette $2
All Neon Like $1.50
5 Years $1.50
Immature $1
Alarm Call $1.50
Pluto $1
All Is Full of Love $1
TOTAL: $15.50

Website: http://www.bjork.com

Recommended: Yes

Great Music to Play While: Listening