Rocktrospectiva: The Acclaimed And Unique "Medúlla" Turns 20

 

Released on 30 August 2004, "Medúlla" was the fifth studio album by Icelandic artist Björk, the artist intended to make an album almost entirely constructed with human vocals, in contrast to the previous album's intense process of composition and multiple layers of instrumentation. The album's title derives from the Latin word for "marrow". The album spawned two singles "Who Is It" & "Triumph Of a Heart" both singles charted the top 40 in the UK, this helped the album to received critical acclaim from music critics, with many calling it "unique", although others deemed it "confusing". 

 

Despite the album was not as commercially successful as her previous albums, but did reach number one in France, Iceland and Wallonia, whilst also peaking within the top ten in the United Kingdom. Medúlla is estimated to have sold more than a million copies worldwide, and received two nominations at the 47th Grammy Awards. 

 

Björk began working on her fifth studio album in 2002, being known as The Lake Album at the time, she explained that she wanted to get away from the world of instruments and electronics present on her previous album, Vespertine, and remarked that the project was "very introverted" and avoided eye contact.When she was finishing Vespertine, Björk knew she wanted to make a vocal album, and had known since her teenage years that one day she would. For her, the majority of the album is connected to the time when she was 17 to 18 years old, focusing on aspects of life, love, family, and friends. She commented that she was thinking about how she used to live her life, how carefree she was, and how others around her affected the way she thought, saying it is shown clearly at the core of Medúlla.

 

Björk began working on the album while eight months pregnant by adding her own live drumming to arrangements to previously recorded demos. She then started muting the instruments, and liked the result of it. Inspired by paganism, and the idea of returning to a universe that is entirely human, without tools or religion or nationalities. "I wanted the record to be like muscle, blood, flesh. We could be in a cave somewhere and one person would start singing, and another person would sing a beat and then the next person sing a melody, and you could just kind of be really happy in your cave. It's quite rootsy", she added.

 

At the time of its construction, Björk considered Medúlla to be her most political album, saying that it countered outbreaks of racism and patriotism that followed the 11 September attacks. Regarding the album's composition, Björk also mentioned that she tried to find the common soul in everything, outside nationality and religion, whilst elaborating that she felt that "in that sense, it's a greatest hits of human spiritualism. Medúlla is almost entirely a cappella, also demonstrating avant-garde and experimental music."Despite its voice-only premise, Medúlla shows off a mile-wide scope of influences", noting elements of folk and medieval music, she also considered the style encompassing the album as "primitive and silly".  

 

The album combines beatboxing, classical choirs that suggest composers like Penderecki or Arvo Pärt, and "mews, moans, counterpoint and guttural grunts" provided by herself and guests like Mike Patton, Robert Wyatt and Tanya Tagaq. Also ncludes "vocal fantasias" that lean toward chamber music, alongside tracks that "are obviously but distantly connected to hip-hop. Glimpses of Bulgarian women's choirs, the polyphony of central African pygmies, and the "primal vocalisms" of Meredith Monk were also noted. 

 

Medúlla opens with "Pleasure Is All Mine", which begins with a vocal harmony layered on top of a woman's panting for a short while prior to when Björk starts singing her verses. The verses additionally have the background filled by a harmonic and cathedral-mimicking choir. "Show Me Forgiveness", an a cappella "short confessional anthem" follows, having no other effect than a subtle echo exerted onto her voice. The third song "Where Is the Line", she lyrically attacks a younger relative for being greedy and unreliable, displaying vexation: "I'm elastic for you, but enough is enough", "Demonic vocals" are delivered by singer Mike Patton, and "angelically dissonant swaths of lush singing" from the Icelandic Choir; as Rahzel beatboxes, the choir emotes some "ahhhs". The song grows darker as it builds up as the male members of the choir deliver heavier sounds, "Vökuró", originally by Jórunn Viðar, is the fourth track on Medúlla. The song is in Icelandic; Björk rolls her tongue around certain words, accompanied by a choir. 

 

During the fifth track "Öll Birtan", Björk's voice is layered over several times, with a voice resembling a drone in the left channel, whilst "doot-doos" echo into the right side of the audio. The lead single "Who Is It" features collaborations by Inuit throat singer Tanya Tagaq and Rahzel, "Submarine", the seventh track on the album, was influenced by Björk's pregnancy with her daughter Ísadóra and how she felt somewhat lazy during that time, "Desired Constellation" was created from a sample of Björk singing the phrase "I'm not sure what to do with it" from "Hidden Place" on her previous album, Vespertine. She imagines herself "With a palm full of stars/ I throw them like dice on the table/ Until the desired constellation appears". 

 

With the ninth song, "Oceania", is about "Mother Oceania", from whom Björk believes all life materialised, whilst she sings: "You have done well for yourselves / Since you left my wet embrace / And crawled ashore"^, "Oceania" also features The London Choir., tenth song "Sonnets/Unrealities XI" was based on the poem "It May Not Always Be So; And I Say" by E. E. Cummings, and features only Björk's singing, with small inflections from the Icelandic Choir while she bids farewell to a lover lyrically. The following track "Ancestors" has no lyrics, featuring only Björk and Tagaq's voices. The twelfth song "Mouth's Cradle" is paced by a "glug, glug" sample of "what might as well be the emptying of a gallon bottle of water". Lyrically, she concludes: "I need a shelter to build an altar away from Osamas and Bushes", the thirteenth track of the album, "Miðvikudags", Björk sings once again in gibberish, while some "doot-doos" can be heard in the background, reminiscent of "Öll Birtan". On the closing track and second single, "Triumph of a Heart", the singer lyrically "celebrates the workings of anatomy", whilst musically it is the album's closest thing to a dance track. The song also features orchestral arrangements by the Icelandic and London Choirs.

 

The album receives acclaim from critics, considered the album as brave and unique, an interesting record in which Björk found a way to bathe her immediately distinctive melodies and vocal nuances in solutions that cause me to reevaluate her voice and her craft, her most extreme record and the most immediately accessible. 

 

Medúlla Track List: 

 

1. Pleasure Is All Mine

2. Show Me Forgiveness

3. Where Is The Line

4. Vökuró

5. Öll Birtan 

6. Who Is It (Carry My Joy On The Left, Carry My Pain On The Right)

7. Submarine

8. Desired Constellation

9. Oceania 

10. Sonnets/Unrealities XI

11. Ancestors

12. Mouth's Cradle

13. Miðvikudags

14. Triumph Of A Heart