VOLTA
(One Little Indian)

CLICK HERE FOR EARTH INTRUDERS VIDEO

When it was revealed a few months back that Björk had roped in a wide array of international artists to work on her new album, including Lightning Bolt drummer Brian Chippendale and some experimental musicians from the Congo, one American music blog website headed their post, “New Björk album to further alienate core fanbase of college students engaging in dorm-room seduction.” And following on from her last releases, 2004’s vocal-only Medúlla, and her extremely inaccessible soundtrack album for husband Matthew Barney’s film Drawing Restraint 9, this news made sense.

Then it was announced that some of the tracks would feature contributions from Timbaland – the man who had recently wrapped up production duties with Justin Timberlake and Nelly Furtado – and Björk’s record label boss said Volta was “probably the most commercial thing she’s ever done”.

So what mongrel beast has this disparate gang of collaborators spawned? Well, while it isn’t as far-out as her most unfathomable work, it is absolutely not the most commercial thing she’s ever done, not in the slightest. OK, maybe the infectious album-opener ‘Earth Intruders’ is a teeny bit Gwen Stefani if you squint your ears. Take off the vocals and maybe you could imagine Missy Elliott rapping over the marching, tribal beats. But Björk sounds nothing like Missy Elliott, and she certainly hasn’t had a chart-baiting Nelly Furtado makeover. She says she hooked up with Timbaland because she wanted to do something fun, and even then, after he left, she spent a year editing “the fuck” out of the three tracks he worked on, before adding other drummers and musicians to the mix.

Besides, Timbaland’s just one of Volta’s many players. The other most notable special guest is Antony ‘And The Johnsons’ Hegarty, who duets with her on two songs, including the album’s showstopper, a near-eight-minute majestic masterpiece called ‘Dull Flame Of Desire’, which builds and builds and builds into a goosebump-inducing crescendo. Above solemn but euphoric brass and pulsating drums, Björk and Antony sing like they’ve just reached spiritual enlightenment.

So Volta may not be pop, but it’s certainly her most eclectic album in years. In severe contrast to the Hegarty tracks, there’s ‘Declare Independence’, a big dirty stomping speaker-blowing techno-punk workout, with Angry Björk working herself up into a frenzy, almost venturing into rave territory as she screams “Raise your flag! Higher, higher!” The catchy ‘Wanderlust’ has heavy electronic beats alongside sombre-but-triumphant brass fanfares, and samples morse code and ships’ horns.

But frustratingly, Volta also has its fair share of seemingly formless songs with melodies that meander all over the place, and sound, to be honest, like works in progress. Björk recently contributed a beautiful cover version (‘The Boho Dance’) to a Joni Mitchell tribute album, and in her accompanying notes wrote of Joni’s unpredictable chord progression – “not the white Christian male c-g-f rock, boy-scout chords that are clean and square and deny the existence of nature”. Ironically, however, her Joni song, as loose as it may be, imprinted itself onto my memory immediately, while some tracks on Volta still sound completely alien after a week of obsessive listening.

So this is a hugely uneven, erratic album. That said, even Björk’s most difficult music is never less than atmospheric and unique, and while her last two albums were insular, introverted affairs, Volta is a big, wide-open collection, both sonically and emotionally, with moments of utter magnificence. And when Björk’s magnificent, she’s untouchable.