Being Mr. Kenny

Let me make one thing clear. I despise record reviews. I think they’re always written by

Sorry, those sentences weren’t going anywhere. I liked them though, so instead of deleting them I’m going to leave them there with a line through.

Anyway, record reviews. When the writer has taken great pains to squash as much praise into his words as his humanly possible, it makes me want to run him over with a lawnmower. Disgusting! Disgusting! Disgusting! So it is with this thought that I start my review.

I have been a fan of Björk since my friend introduced me to her when I was 16. She got me into music, and I have been a loyal fan of hers ever since. When I bought Vespertine, I was horrified to discover that I didn’t like it. I blamed myself, of course, and after hours of hard work it clicked and it took up residence in my head like some sort of parasite (or foetus, depending on whether or not you like Björk) for years afterwards.

That exercise, I purport, stretched my ears out of shape. I now cannot listen to music unless at least one of the instruments is amplified earwigs walking across wax that was made by blind nuns in Norway. If there’s not trombones played backwards, underwater, by buffaloes, I don’t want to know.

The upside of that is that Volta, Björk’s 6th or 8th studio album depending on how you count things, made instant and complete sense to me the first time I heard it. It took about half a listen to get into it, and now it’s sitting in my head further messing up my musical tastes.

So that’s enough of this review!