Björk

Drawing Restraint (One Little Indian)

By Megan Milks
Published: October 23rd, 2005 | 11:46am

I'm stuck in that uncomfortable position of reviewing a soundtrack without having seen the accompanying film, but Matthew Barney's Drawing Restraint 9 hasn't been screened anywhere but San Francisco and Toronto as of now. But surprise, surprise: Björk's soundtrack to the new Barney film is as anti-pop as one might expect from the pairing of these two increasingly esoteric artists.

If you've seen Barney's five-part magnum opus, The Cremaster Cycle, you know that Barney is an ultra-experimental multimedia artist with little patience for traditional form. In fact, Vaseline is his preferred medium. His filmwork, at least what I've seen, is gorgeous, solipsistic, taxing, and completely inaccessible unless you come to it already having read synopses and analyses and know not only that the cremaster is some sort of male-genital muscle and that Harry Houdini is an important figure for Barney, but also that Barney reqires an open mind and gobs of patience from his viewers. The new film takes place on a Japanese whaling ship, and both Barney and Björk "star," if you can call it that.

Barney's partnership with Björk on Drawing Restraint 9 makes sense, as Björk has become perhaps the most eccentric popular artist of her day (not to mention that she is also married to the dude). Björk hasn't squeezed out a hook since Vespertine, and even that album is somewhat "difficult." Her work here is as far from "Human Behavior" as one can get, with Japanese chanting and Inuit throat singing filling up a good third of the album, and nary a head-bopping beat in sight.

Though she's written (alongside Barney), produced, and primarily arranged the album, Björk lends her voice to only three songs. The album centers around the sho, a Japanese reed-and-pipe instrument, although harp and celeste feature prominently as well. Will Oldham (Bonnie "Prince" Billy) contributes his ghost-angel vocals to album-opener "Gratitude," which is written as a letter to General MacArthur thanking him for lifting whaling restrictions, and propelled forward by rapid waves of celeste and harp. "Pearl" features throat singing from Tagaq, who worked with Björk on Medulla, and "Holygraphic Entrypoint" is a ten-minute Noh-inspired vocal performance by Shiro Nomure and Shonosuke Okura.

The friendliest tune here is "Ambergis March," a playful harpsichord- and glockenspiel-driven romp, while "Hunter Vessel," the fifth track, introduces a dark brass theme that's returned to in "Vessel Shimenawa." Reminiscent of Vespertine's "Aurora," "Antarctic Return" is the Björk-iest of the soundtrack's songs, with celeste and harp plinking behind the repeated line, "from the moment of commitment / nature conspires to help you."

The artistry on this album is formidable, as is, I predict, the artistry of the film -- just looking at the stills, I'm struck by the composition of mise-en-scene, the costuming, and the inherent, surely symbolic weirdness of Barney's aesthetic. Music-wise, Björk has stretched herself, dabbling into sho and brass arrangement and synthesizing the sounds of traditional Japanese musical forms. It's a musicologist's wet dream, but I gotta say, if I have to pick which Björk album I want to chill with, it's Post all the way. Nothing beats the ballsy synth-hook of "Army of Me". Am I slumming with lowbrow pop by admitting so? I think not. Drawing Restraint 9, for all its heft and mastery of form and vocal, is neither fun nor particularly compelling. In other words, it's just too academic.