OTR: Björk - Greatest Hits

[illusionofjoy]

Right - I'm laying off the politics for a moment to resurrect my much neglected "Off The Rack" series. You all know and most of you don't care that Barack Obama is off my Xmas card list anyhow...

Between Selmasongs and this, Björk's Greatest Hits, Björk had one other proper studio album: Vespertine. Like Selmasongs, Vespertine arrived as a promo for WAIH and I snagged it to review personally, making it the second Björk album I'd ever hear all the way through. Greatest Hits, via the same avenue, would be the third.

This collection, put together based on the votes of fans via Björk's website, is damn near perfect. The only song that is missing is "It's Oh So Quiet," but that's really a minor complaint given the extremely high calibre of the material here. The opening song is the Stigmata mix of "All Is Full Of Love," which is only one of the most sensual songs ever recorded (the original version, from Homogenic is far more spacey). The music video equals it, eschewing being a trashy ad for a mediocre film for something far more compelling: the viewer is treated to the vision of two Björk robots mirroring each other in a loving embrace. It is sweetly surreal.

"Hyper-Ballad" is track two, building on Björk's brand of uniquely twisted sensuality. Unfortunately, "Human Behaviour," suffers for interrupting the trilogy that would be "All Is Full Of Love," "Hyper-Ballad" and "Jóga." Still, that doesn't make "Human Behaviour" a bad song, it just feels somewhat out of place in this particular sequence. Obviously Björk's Greatest Hits is not sequenced chronologically.

Still, despite minor imperfections (mostly rendered by the judgement of asshole DJs like myself) in the sequencing, this collection got me through many long hours doing data entry as a temp worker back when I first moved to Pittsburgh. At the time, I was still subjecting myself to the indignity of hauling CDs and a set of headphones to plug into my work computer to my workplace so I'd have something to break up the monotony of the day. Given that music was limited to two or three discs which would likely be on repeat play all day, I was very picky with what I brought in. This collection got many, many listens.

In fact, I don't feel like writing about it any further, so I can just lay back and listen to it. I will say this, however: even if you have all of Björk's proper studio albums, this collection is still worth buying for the alternate mixes of "All Is Full Of Love" and "Big Time Sensuality," as well as the hard to find single "Play Dead."