Björk live!

Björk
Auditorium Theatre, Chicago
Saturday, May 12, 2007

Björk gets a lot of leeway because of her insatiable musical ambition and thorough reinventions, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t dump a lot of scrap in her fans laps. Saturday at the Auditorium the inconsistencies of her latest album, Volta (Elektra), carried into a set that could be as beguiling as plodding.

You wouldn’t know it from her fans, though. The endlessly rapturous support threatened to turn any coverage of the event into an amateur sociological treatise (instead of the usual amateur concert review). So desperate were her fans to converse with her that the handful of “thank you” concessions in the first set were often met with a lung-emptying, “No! Thank *you*!” You’d think after the letter-bomb incident some people would take a step back, but I digress.

The elfin songstress certainly wasn’t provoking them. The opening salvo of her 90-minute night focused largely on slower, ballad material that was far less interesting than her shiny gold puff-suit and multi-colored leggings. A 10-strong, oompa-loompa-looking horn section was initially eviscerated by the coldness of three DJ/computer stations. The backdrop wasn’t much to speak of either, speckled with triangular flags sporting fish and forest creatures.

Saturday began just as Volta does, with the tribal/industrial “Earth Intruders”; Björk began to stretch her limber voice immediately, yelling “Turmoil! Carnage! Rambling!” Unfortunately it was one of the muddiest vocal performances I’ve ever heard in the acoustically prisitine theater. Even when skyrocketing to her peaks, distortion blew sand into the mix, a problem only exacerbated by the array of modulated tones set forth by her band. She seemed to ask for patience, declaring “You have to trust it!” but a steady stream of vaguely definitive album cuts (“Venus As A Boy,” “Wanderlust,” “It’s Not Up To You,” “Pagan Poetry”) failed to reward such trust. Björk herself seemed in a funk, her reluctant dance moves mere pantomime to the eccentric character she used to so brazenly portray. She was negatively Ozzy-esque.

If the set’s first two-thirds were meant to draw lines under the intricacies of harpsichord and angular Eastern melodies, however, the finale was based on volume. “Army Of Me” stormed from the P.A. with industrial authority, setting the table nicely for a wildly dramatic “Bachleorette” and giddy “Hyper-Ballad,” which nearly got caught in an electrical storm before freeing itself. (At this point she had reanimated herself, prancing around with the ear-to-ear smile that was once thought to be permanent.)

It was all prologue to “Declare Independence,” however. The song’s command to “Raise your flag!” was an indirect reminder to not confuse her alleged inconsistencies with Björk continuing to clear her own path. It’s also probably good advice for those of us hesitant to keep following it.

— Steve Forstneger

Category: Live Reviews, Weekly