Sorry no more

Björk remixes up an urgent Telegram

by Charles Taylor

Björk is nearly a guest star on her new Telegram (Elektra, in stores January 14), so it may not be much of a compliment to say that it's the most enjoyable thing she's released. Telegram is a remixed and resequenced version of Björk's last album, 1995's Post. The notes on my advance CD claim that Telegram is a chance for Björk to put out her different conceptions of the songs that appeared on that album. Whoever's conception it is we're hearing, though, Telegram is a producer's and mixer's album, pure and simple. The notes are right in calling it a radical restructuring. But what's most radical -- and most satisfying -- is that Björk has become only one element in the mix.

I've been alternately intrigued and irritated by Björk for a couple of years now. When her first solo album, Debut, came out a few years back I couldn't change the dial fast enough every time "Human Behaviour" turned up on the radio. The song's video, with its faux fairy-tale imagery of Björk being chased by a giant teddy bear, confirmed my image of her as the happy pixie of alterna-pop. I decided I'd just as soon change the channel and allow her to let her porridge cool in peace.

When Post came along, something about the insistent melodrama of "Army of Me" got my attention. I wanted to change the channel on this one, too, but wound up listening to it more often than not. And by the time her version of "It's Oh So Quiet" (originally done by Betty Hutton) appeared, I capitulated. Listening to Björk coo and shriek her way through it made me think of the way little kids get attached to songs they stumble upon in their parents' record collection (for me it was the Ink Spots' "If I Didn't Care") and mime and sing along till they wear themselves out.

Still, I couldn't shake the feeling that I was listening to the '90s Kate Bush whenever I put Post in the CD player. I've got no qualms about Telegram, however. As a piece of alternative dance pop, it's as strange and entertaining as No Protection, producer Mad Professor's remix of Massive Attack's Protection album. Björk has less opportunity to waft off into her Brothers Grimm fantasy world here. On the original "Cover Me," she played the elf-woman going off to have adventures, like the girls you knew in college who lit their rooms by candlelight and insisted on wearing capes. Telegram's "Dillinja Mix" replaces the dreaminess of that version with a hectic, urban feel. Alarms (school bells, maybe?) go off in the background, electronic buzzing courses in and out. And because of that, the line "This is really dangerous" sounds connected to something real and potentially threatening, not like a grown woman pretending there are giants hiding in the closet.

Much of what makes Telegram work are the propulsive beats that give numbers like Eumir Deodato's remix of "Isobel," or the best number, "I Miss You (Dobie Rub Part One -- Sunshine Mix)," their momentum, keeping them from becoming insular and tangled up in Björk's verbal eccentricities. Those oddities are reduced to a series of electronic blips on the opening "Possibly Maybe (Lucy Mix)," but her voice is right up front, growling and stronger than ever on the new "My Spine," with its background instrumentation that sounds like a cross between talking drums and tin cans filled with water. And the Brodsky Quartet's backing on "Hyperballad" pushes that precious rural fantasy to its nearly operatic extreme. The song's ending, with the strings imitating bird calls and competing with Björk's voice, brings out the melodrama that somehow validates the dippiness of the whole conception. Then there are the exercises in rhythmic dissonance, like "Enjoy," which features something like the sound of a needle being jerked off a record run through electronic distortion, or Graham Massey's stunning remix of "Army of Me" (called "Army of Mine"), the most extreme thing here.

For all the self-effacement of Telegram, there's a way in which the album completes Björk. She's always aspired to make dream music, and she does it here without wafting off into the vapors. The closing track, "Headphones," is true dream music. Listening to it is like waking up in the middle of the night and hearing a voice and not knowing whether it's the TV or the hiss of a bad connection coming over your answering machine. Midway, it shifts, and the voice seems to be coming down through the ceiling, the way a dream seems close in the seconds after you wake from it. For people like me, who've been intrigued by Björk but felt slightly foolish admitting it, the harder edge of Telegram means never having to say you're sorry.