If Björk wasn’t hands down the best part of Bluesfest, her hair certainly was.
The Icelandic singer took the stage Saturday night as one of the most anticipated acts of the festival with hundreds of fans crowding the Bell Stage for a glimpse of the weird wonderment that is Björk.
As heavy bass permeated the darkness on stage, Björk emerged, wearing a mash-up ensemble of a nightclub singer’s sequin dress and Aphrodite’s toga. Short as she is, her stage presence is larger than life. In all fairness, the orange afro is a pretty big attention-grabber too.
Accompanied by the all-female Icelandic choir Graduale Nobili, the ethereal soundscape that I imagine Iceland sounds like all the time became fully realized—with the help of enough technology to power a NASA spaceflight.
In all seriousness, the technological components that create Björk’s unique sound didn’t overpower her, but simply enhanced her unfathomably large vocal range (which was almost as big as her hair).
It’s hard to describe her sound without just using synonyms for ethereal. It sort of feels like you’re floating above an endless ocean while the bass makes ripples outwards. I can’t describe it in a less spacey way. Björk is so masterful that it really is unlike anything I’ve heard before.
With the concert picking up speed, the Icelandic songstress moved from her earlier music, with hits like “Moon” and “Hunter”—which, while still electronic, were a little too whimsical for me—into her later, often times darker sound.
Images displayed on the flat screens above her suddenly started shifting from light shows, galaxies, and what I imagine the inside of an arcade game into a graphic animation of sea worms burrowing into a dead seal’s eye sockets.
What I’d give to co-habitate her mind for five minutes.
Slightly before the ophthalmologist worms, around about the time that the music starting taking a turn for the weird and exciting, an enormous cage descended from the rafters stopping, just above Björk’s head.
The electro beats started to pick up and after a quick geography lesson on tectonic plates during “Jóga,” the cage started warming up and soon bolts of electricity were flying through it.
Small lightning storms flying across the stage, strobe lights and enough bass to make your heart stop was just the start of Björk’s second half. As she danced around like a crazed woodland creature with her choir crew of blonde backup vocalists, I couldn’t fathom what she had in mind for the finale.
Pyrotechnics.
Seven-foot tall flames and a wall of sparklers erupted on stage with the cage looking like it might electrocute her—not that her hair would change shape. Björk blasted through hits like “Hyperballad,” “Pluto,” and her finale “Náttúra.”
With an encore performance of her controversial call-to-arms, “Declare Independence,” I found myself screaming “Raise your flag! Higher, higher!” Maybe in a hope that she might look at me, but also because I didn’t think someone who may or may not have been birthed from a magical volcano in central Iceland could be so captivating.
If there is a call for volunteers to teleport to Icelandia 5000—or whichever dimension Björk inhabits—consider me test subject number one.
