tectactoe
User

Reviews 5
Approval 97%

Soundoffs 61
Album Ratings 5437
Objectivity 88%

Last Active 09-06-22 1:37 pm
Joined 09-24-05

Review Comments 7,269

 Lists
10.05.23 🤠 tec’s Recs 🤠 Q2 + Q3 (2023) ♦04.06.23 tec’s Q1 2023 Report - 7 & Ups ♦
03.07.23 Board Games I’ve Been Enjoying Lately09.23.22 17th Sputversary | Jazz: FREE! ♦
08.25.22 TIER LIST: Miles Davis08.03.22 TIER LIST: John Coltrane ♦
06.27.22 Sput Political Compass Alignment04.14.22 SIGHT & SOUND: Sput Edition ♦
04.11.22 tec's FUGAZI, Ranked12.12.21 tec's 2021 - Top 50 (100) ♦
12.07.21 Sput's Gym/Fitness Thread10.14.21 tec’s NEW ORDER, Ranked ♦
10.04.21 16th Sput-versary / Overlooked 80s Gems09.22.21 tec tiers: PIZZA TOPPINGS
07.06.21 tec’s HALFWAY Check-in - 202104.13.21 tec's 2021 Q1 - Top 15
04.07.21 tec’s KING CRIMSON, Ranked ♦03.31.21 tec’s GODFLESH, Ranked
More »

tec’s BJORK, Ranked

Icelandic Queen forgiveth me, for I know not what I do.
9Bjork
Utopia

Overall Score | 2.86 | 🌕🌕🌕🌑🌑

🥇 Arisen My Senses
🥈 Losss
🥉 Blissing Me

Good, but too one-track minded to be great, and bloated such that its relatively narrow perspective grows positively stale by the album’s closing moments. Again, as with any Björk release, there are moments of ethereal beauty, tracks pocked with elegant grace notes of transcendence and emotion. The bigger picture is still a bit out of focus, however, and oftentimes that lack of focus feels not exploratory but genuinely aimless. Above average record, but only slightly.
8Bjork
Biophilia

Overall Score | 3.20 | 🌕🌕🌕🌑🌑

🥇 Thunderbolt
🥈 Moon
🥉 Mutual Core

Björk’s most outwardly poised “concept” album, and yet it feels the most skeletal of the bunch; not just sonically but also thematically. It’s as though the philosophy she wanted to explore - the parallelism of nature and music - doesn’t inform the structures or compositions as effectively as one might hope. It’s not without some masterful tracks, surely—“Thunderbolt” would rank highly among her entire discography for me—but I rarely find myself awestruck by the elements of design, and thus, in many ways, all the underlying concept does is act like an anchor for Björk’s usually blossoming creativity.
7Bjork
Medulla

Overall Score | 3.46 | 🌕🌕🌕🌗🌑

🥇 Desired Constellation
🥈 Triumph of a Heart
🥉 Who Is It

There would be many contenders for this title, but MEDULLA gets my vote for Björk’s most fundamentally “experimental” album. (I am excluding DRAWING RESTRAINT 9 from consideration for any of this.) The heavily a cappella approach, throat singing, beatboxing, and constant shift to Icelandic initially threw me—when I first heard this, I was not a fan. At all. But repeated listened have warmed me up to its avant-garde tendencies and I appreciate the metaphorical balls required to follow up an album as monumental as VESPERTINE with something so brash and unrelentingly angular. The strange second cousin twice removed that never smiles for family pictures but makes every group event interesting.
6Bjork
Volta

Overall Score | 3.50 | 🌕🌕🌕🌗🌑

🥇 Earth Intruders
🥈 The Dull Flame of Desire
🥉 Wanderlust

My vote for the most underrated Björk release. Its ubiquitous placement at the absolute bottom of her discography continues to puzzle me, and the common complaints that “it’s too experimental” or “too weird” are simply wrongheaded. Have you people not heard any of her previous albums? It’s a bit frontloaded - the first three tracks are the best three - but Side B still has a massive personality, whether in the folky melody of “Hope” or the unraveled digital breakdown of “Declare Independence.”
5Bjork
Post

Overall Score | 3.68 | 🌕🌕🌕🌗🌑

🥇 Hyper-Ballad
🥈 Isobel
🥉 Possibly Maybe

Representative of a gigantic growth in maturity of sound and songwriting over a mere two years (and probably less, in actuality). This album’s placement is bound to have some Björk-heads whetting their pitchforks viz., how could I possibly prefer DEBUT to POST? Answer: I dunno. Maybe I’m trying to subconsciously retain my “child-at-heart” demeanor and this album’s undeniably darker and more macabre tone appeals ever-so-slightly less to those sensibilities. But make no mistake: This is a monumental record with a handful of instant classics. If not my favorite Björk, perhaps the most important for her career. (Without this stepping stone, there would be no HOMOGENIC.)
4Bjork
Debut

Overall Score | 3.77 | 🌕🌕🌕🌕🌑

🥇 Human Behavior
🥈 Crying
🥉 Come to Me

Substantially different than everything that would postdate it (w.r.t. to her own catalog) but also substantially different than everything *by everybody else* that antedates it. Nineties pop with a backbone, with a distinct individuality, and a spark of truly visionary artfulness, probably the greatest example of such an album since HOUNDS OF LOVE was released in ’85. And while this album isn’t as “big” as Bush’s opus conceptually, its dynamism is deceivingly massive. Where else will you find a pared-down, chamber folk ballad like “Like Someone in Love” sandwiched between a faux-live House jam (“There’s More to Life Than This”) and an Electro Dance-pop groove (“Big Time Sensuality”)?
3Bjork
Vulnicura

Overall Score | 3.78 | 🌕🌕🌕🌕🌑

🥇 Notget
🥈 Stonemilker
🥉 Lionsong

Beautiful companion piece to VESPERTINE, and equally as heart-churning (only for a diametrically opposite reason). Some of Björk’s most deeply affecting arrangements lie here—the orchestration is towering, the themes unforgiving, and her voice as powerful and commanding as ever. A bit more “straightforward” than the trio preceding it; many people will mistake this for a sheepish lack of experimentation. But that’s bullshit—this is as unique as anything she’s done, and the (comparative) traditionality means the raw emotion is highly concentrated, front-and-center, impossible to sidestep.
2Bjork
Homogenic

Overall Score | 4.55 | 🌕🌕🌕🌕🌗

🥇 Unravel
🥈 All Is Full of Love
🥉 Hunter

Not quite my favorite Björk album anymore (obviously), but sixteen-year-old me would’ve begged to differ, and even thirty-one-year-old me can’t fault anyone for putting this atop their list. That comment is not meant to imply juvenilia here, either, simply that my tastes have changed a little over the past decade and a half. But not much—this is loaded with bangers top to bottom, and to think this was released in 1997 is nearly unfathomable. Hell, it sounds fresh *now*. “Unravel” is consistently in the running for my all-time favorite song; I swear to god I get teary-eyed just thinking about it.
1Bjork
Vespertine

Overall Score | 5.00 | 🌕🌕🌕🌕🌕

🥇 Unison
🥈 Undo
🥉 Pagan Poetry

A classic in every sense of the word, and one that ranks among my five or so favorite albums of all time. A quintessential wintertime record, for sure—“Frosti” might be the most aptly titled song ever, from its icy chimes to the snow-crunching sound effects—yet it carries a latent warmth beneath its chilly exterior that lingers indefinitely. “Cocoon”, “Undo”, and “Heirloom”, for example, are just downright cozy, like a warm blanket and cup of hot chocolate by the fireside on a freezing day in mid-January. The pinnacle of quote-unquote art pop.
Show/Add Comments (62)

STAFF & CONTRIBUTORS // CONTACT US

Bands: A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
Site Copyright 2005-2023 Sputnikmusic.com
All Album Reviews Displayed With Permission of Authors | Terms of Use | Privacy Policy