21 septembre 2016

Royal Albert Hall

Londres, Royaume-Uni

Capacité : environ 5 500 places

Anecdote

Björk n’avait pas interprété le titre I’ve Seen It All depuis 13 ans.

Vidéos

Family (extrait) :

Rappel :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEK1oKx4EHE

Critiques

Watching Björk sing these beautiful orchestral pieces feels startlingly, punishingly, direct. The fact that her voice seemingly hasn’t changed since the 1980s as she delivers her lyrics is striking – it gets more supercharged by the song, crackling with electricity. She tells the audience about how her “shield is gone” (Black Lake), and hymns “every single fuck” (History of Touches), as well as the death of her family in Family ; the last feels especially stark when she asks “how to sing us out of this sorrow ?”. In this grand, open space, Björk’s songs recall, rather strangely, the toughest emotional moments of opera, and powerfully re-render them. Guardian

After an interval, dressed in a fibre-optic lampshade and mask that showed more of her face, she dipped back into her back catalogue, getting wilder and wilder reactions each time a song intro sparked recognition in the audience. In particular two tracks from 1997’s Homogenic – “Joga” and, in an encore, “Pluto” – worked brilliantly shorn of the heavy dance music production, while “Pagan Poetry” from Vespertine sparked an impromptu and extraordinarily well in-tune backing vocal singalong from the crowd, once more reminding how many hooklines are hidden beneath the lead vocal lines in Björk’s songs. From the unflinching examinations of pain and resentment in the first half, the show had transformed into a glorious celebration, and the palpable love for the performer was infectious. Consider me a convert. The Arts Desk