It looks like Asgard with a harpest to the side and a Greek chorus surrounding Bjork both part of and commentting on the action. In the circle,with audience members on all sides, Bjork was gonna take us to another planet, ancient Norse, modern time, somewhere in the outer reaches…
Or at least to Biophilia where nature, music and technology get together which arrived at Roseland Saturday as part of a four night residency, and while Bjork's latest eccentricity is silly beyond words, her show was really great.
Last year, Bjork released a weirdly obstreperous wall paper for the mind album and an app to go with it, where she claimed tech can get us back to nature and asrteiods, which the app game resembled. Technology can't do that, of course, though i might have believed it could if Bjork's songs were more songerly and less soundscapy. Some 30 odd years into Bjork's career and she has gone from being an eccentric and charming music composer to simply eccentric. In 1994, Bjork blew me away at the Academy, nearly 30 years later only the movie soundtrack and the Dirty Projectors collaboration have done the same.
So I came to Bjork expecting the worst and what I got was rock and roll show which functioned first and foremost as a rock and roll show and did so well. Like so many shows before it, Bjork, in a red wig and spacegirl outfit with bumpers on the side, took a little while to get cooking.
David Attenborough, who sounded like he'd just been hijacked off one of the old Disney TV shows nature specials, introduced some of the album titles and concepts -on tape of course- and everything feels pecular, people are not quite show whether they're in a Church or a rock concert. Eventually, they remember they're at a rock concert, blatantly ignore the no pix or filming edict, and an early "Crystalline" gets a good hand and the video of worms are kinda cute. Bjork says "thank you" after each song twirping like a bird being fed a worm. And the set rolls along well oiled and running like clock work, but a little mechanical rather than natural.
A couple of songs later, "Virus" is much better. For the first time I can actually hear the song in one of her Biophilia songs. The beats are very powerful and the Chorus, the Icelandaic choir Graduale Nobili, going bonkers like they are the virus and Bjork is the host.
Beter still, an oldie "Generous Palmstroke" is not simply the first change of pace from the established worlds without end Bjork sound, but her best vocal work out. A folk song of sorts, the song made zero impression on me in the past, but tonight, perhaps because of its environment, sounds very melodic (which it isn't) and extremely powerful (which it is). Bjork has a great voice and she leads us to the payoff, a streched out "embraaaace"
"Cosmonology" follows and is a thrilla and "Solstice" is introduced as "gravity, counterpoint" with a finger picked guitar quite at odds with the surrounding.attractions. Ben Ratcliff wrote in his New York Times review that "The songs are about bodies, geology, and space — self, ground and sky, interconnecting and explaining one another." And after watching the show, I kinda see what he means. There is an interconnection between everything that is going on stage and while it is only as good or bad as the music on stage, it is a mirror image of the songs concerns. If the music didn't work, the conceits wouldn't matter. But the music is wonderful and therefore everything works.
The first encore was the sure shot "Possibly, Maybe" -and I was happy to hear it but it wasn't the show saver I expected. Biophilia didn't need saving.
Grade: A-