150. Björk
Hammersmith Apollo
24 September 2016
Look, I’m not one of those people who spins Björk records on a Sunday morning whilst rearranging pebbles into runes and fermenting yak’s milk. I admire the idea of Björk more than the actual sonic outcome. But live? That’s different. She’s the empress of eccentricity. The Icelandic oracle of operatic oddities. If she was going to self-combust mid-aria in a sequinned beekeeping veil, I wanted to be there to see it.
So, I summoned my two partners-in-gig and best friends. They were, it must be said, on a “cultural curiosity” ticket, in other words, they fancied a cocktail and had a mild curiosity to see what might happen. And then… she arrived.
Björk took the stage dressed as, I think, the concept of air pollution interpreted as a children’s puppet theatre. That voice, ah yes, that voice, burst forth like a possessed kettle. I couldn’t see where she’d stashed the kittens she was clearly throttling, but the sound was there: haunting, high-pitched, and laced with trauma. The RSPCA would've shut the gig down on the intro alone.
Now let’s be fair. The music, when you could hear it, was lush. Sweeping strings, glacial synths, some kind of sonic landscape not unlike a Daliesque Sigûr Rós. But every time I found myself drifting off into some ambient reverie, the Cat Chorus of Reykjavik piped up again. And not just piped up, they wailed. She mimed along with them too, as if to gaslight us into thinking the noise was intentional and might be coming from her, clearly a misdirection. It was all very “Icelandic performance art meets aggressive pet handling”.
By song five, one of my friends was whispering something about war crimes and the other had gone visibly pale. There was a real concern we might be implicated in some bizarre feline controversy by simply remaining in the venue. So, we did the only decent thing: we slipped out quietly and headed for the Gore Hotel, Kensington.
Two Negronis in, we felt steadier. Three Negronis in, we rang the RSPCA tip line anonymously and asked them to investigate potential cat-related crimes.
And yet… I can’t stop thinking about it. It was like watching a moonrise over a landfill. All at once beautiful then mildly horrifying.