Bjork

Why didn't someone tell me that video of this existed? I didn't discovered the early (1990) Bjork album Gling Glo until 2001, over a decade after its release, but when I finally did I fell in love with it. To this day, not a month goes by where I don't listen to at least one track or another off the album, and listening to any one track usually leads me to playing the whole album. 

I don't mean to diss Bjork's significant discography or artistic output, but the album doesn't sound anything like her other releases. It's a jazz album - a vocal jazz album - and jazz singing is far from my favorite genre. But Bjork, years before Human Behavior or the Debut LP, was already able to infuse the material with her own unique energy and personality. 

Gling Glo was recorded when the 25-year-old Björk was in the psychedelic Icelandic band, The Sugarcubes, and in just a few days with few overdubs. Apparently, and this part is news to me, she and the band promoted the album with appearances on Icelandic television, and just last night, I stumbled across video of those appearances. Imagine listening to an album for 25 years, picturing the performance in your mind, and then suddenly finding video of it. That was my experience last night.

It doesn't sound like her other albums, but it's unmistakably Bjork. Listen to how her voice bends and twists the songs, how she leaps from purr to growl, and how she leans into some passages with her characteristic fierce energy, holding nothing back, and then snaps back to sweet melodic mode almost instantly. These are really remarkable performances.  

The songs are in Icelandic, and I understand they're mostly based on local folk and children's songs ("gling glo" is "ding dong" in Icelandic). The album includes two songs in English, a rip-roaring cover of The Platters' Ruby Baby and Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man by Kern and Hammerstein from the musical, Show Boat. It's not on the album, but apparently she also performed a cover of Frank Sinatra's I Fall In Love Too Easily, famously covered by Miles Davis. 

If you're having a hard time envisioning Bjork as a jazz singer, you might want to think back to Post, the second album under her name, and its cover of It's All So Quiet, as performed here on The Tonight Show.