( *808 State featuring.... )
Chart entered : 27 April 1991
Chart peak : 42
Number of hits : 22
And so we enter the post-Record Mirror era. Although I was already buying Q and would stupidly persevere with Smash Hits for another eight months though it had long since stopped catering to my tastes ( and was starting to mock them ), the absence of a weekly music paper soon told and I never felt quite as connected to what was going on thereafter. Of course both Melody Maker and the NME survived but I still associated the latter with very pretentious writing and both were still in the broadsheet format which meant that , living at my parents' house, I'd have quickly run out of room to store them.
Bjork is another of those artists who had a cult following in the eighties but rose to become a mainstream player in the nineties without too many compromises. Bjork Guomundsdottir was born in Reykjavik in 1965. She learned classical piano and flute at school. In 1976, her school sent a recording of her performance of Tina Charles's I Love To Love to Iceland's radio station and she had a recording contract by the age of 11. Her debut album "Bjork" came out in 1977. Her only writing contribution was a recorder instrumental and the album included covers of Syreeta's Your Kiss Is Sweet and the Beatles' Fool On The Hill translated into Icelandic. "Bjork" isn't a worldbeater but unlike, say, Dannii Minogue, she was already a competent vocalist and her forays into disco, funk and reggae are not unpleasant. "Musastiginn" is actually pretty good.
Bjork was offered the opportunity to make a follow up but declined. She bought a piano with her earnings and started writing her own songs. She became interested in punk rock and formed a girl band Spit and Snot. In 1980 she dabbled in jazz fusion with a group called Exodus. In 1982 she joined a Goth / punk band called Tappi Tikarass who were influenced by Siouxsie and the Banshees and The Cure. They released one album "Miranda", recorded in England, in November 1983 by which time Bjork had quit to join a more experimental outfit called Kukl. Kukl released two albums "The Eye" and "Holidays in Europe" released on the Crass label, a result of co-vocalist Einar Orn's friendship with Crass's members, formed while studying media at the Polytechnic of Central London. Bjork sang in English for the first time but that doesn't make them any more accessible.
In 1986 Bjork and Einar broke away from Kukl and along with Bjork's then-husband Por Eldon formed The Sugarcubes. Their first international single was "Birthday", released in August 1987 on One Little Indian and immediately lauded by Peelie and the music press. It left me pretty cold though. It sounds very like The Cocteau Twins with its circular riff, static drums and semi-operatic vocals. The lyrics detail a five year old's crush on an adult which might have raised concerns in some quarters although they're hard to decipher on a casual listen. The song reached number 65 in the charts. Though less celebrated, the follow-up "Cold Sweat", which sounds like The Cure fronted by a Toyah who's learned how to sing in tune, did slightly better, reaching number 56.
The album "Life's Too Good" was released in April 1988 to warm reviews for its mixture of Goth-leaning indie and playfully macabre art rock. Bjork's free form vocals and Orn's rant-raps ( notably absent from the first two singles ) are both an acquired taste but underline the anarchic intent behind the band which was not conceived as a commercial project. The group were taken by surprise at the attention they received. The third single "Deus" , a playful avowal of atheism , sounds like 10,000 Maniacs although Orn's spoken word sections also put me in mind of Are Friends Electric ? It inched them closer to the Top 40 by reaching number 51. Next came a re-recording of "Birthday" which reached exactly the same position second time around.
The album reached number 14 in the UK and 54 in the USA. The band set to work on a follow-up that they hadn't envisaged making. That was "Here Today, Tomorrow Next Week" released in September 1989. Although it did much the same business on both sides of the Atlantic, it had a much cooler reception from the critics. This was partly down to Orn's greater role in proceedings but also the Talking Heads meets Captain Beefheart territory it explored meant it was less inventive and more uniform than its predecessor and the lack of melody grates as the album wears on. "Regina " , with Orn's Monster Mash rants about not liking lobster, was a pretty challenging first single and stalled at number 58. The messed up calypso of "Tidal Wave " with another prominent splurge of nonsense from Orn and relatively accessible "Planet" failed to chart as singles.
The band were somewhat shaken by the negative response to the LP and put themselves on ice after the tour finished in 1990, hoping they might be able to wriggle free of their contractual obligation to deliver another album. Bjork released an album of acoustic jazz covers in Icelandic "Gling-Glo" in the autumn of 1990. That's also when she met the guys from 808 State on The Word and was invited to contribute to their third album. Bjork is featured on two tracks, both of which were existing instrumentals on which she improvised a vocal.
"Oops" was chosen as the third single. I like the New Order-ish intro which promises a decent tune but it all goes downhill from there. The guitars drop out and Bjork extemporises over a listless funky drum beat accompanied by big piano chords , jazz trumpet and ambient keyboard noises. The song is about sexual promise and is delivered in her usual unrestrained style with no regard for melody. To me it sounds like free form drivel and it certainly brought 808 State's run of Top 20 hits to an abrupt end; they would rarely return. It's hard not to conclude that she got more out of the liaison than they did . Graham Massey worked up a number of the songs that went on her breakthrough album "Debut" but was dropped when she chose Nellee Hooper as producer and received no credit on the album. In fairness, she did bring him back into the fold for the follow-up "Post" and they remain friends.
No comments:
Post a Comment