All hail the ice queen

Björk's writing often reminds me of Richard Wagner, who was once called "the greatest master of the miniature" (an ironic designation, given that his compositions sometimes stretched toward five hours) because of the occasional hugely memorable moments ("catchy" is officially out of bounds in discussing classical music) that punctuate the many hours of less easily grasped melody. Björk's songs have a similar mix of catchy moments scattered through more or less abstruse melodies: Few people know how the melody for "Big Time Sensuality" starts, but anyone who watched MTV in the early '90s could cheerfully belt out the single measure when she sings the words "big time sensuality."

Her other secret is her weirdness: Björk is not a pop star with whom we "identify" in the usual sense. It seems only fitting that we don't sing along with her melodies. Listening to U2, we sing along with Bono, even if only internally; listening to Björk, we sit back and allow ourselves to be amazed.

The quality of music alone can never explain success on the level that Björk has enjoyed it, and indeed her allure extends in a number of nonmusical directions. There is her elfin beauty (the adjective is as persistently attached to Björk as "luminous" is to Cate Blanchett), her seemingly inexhaustible youth and her outlandish fashion sensibility. There are her relationships with stars like Goldie and Tricky, and her current liaison with artist Matthew Barney. There is her accent, an occasionally incomprehensible blend of Icelandic and Cockney, with some Scottish R's rolled in for good measure, that lends every song and interview an unmistakable air of the exotic. There was her courageous performance in Lars von Trier's heartless, inhumane film "Dancer in the Dark." All this aside, I think that Björk is an important figure for symbolic reasons. To explain this, we need to return to her dealings with technology.

The idea of a struggle between man and machine is one that currently enjoys an extraordinary resonance, as the impact of the "Matrix" movies has made clear. Many of the most popular and acclaimed contemporary musicians have addressed this struggle, or at least toyed with it. Cher, Madonna and the vocoder set seem to be hinting at the idea of a bionic woman, merging themselves with electronics. Radiohead has used electronics in a particularly ominous and threatening way, constructing a sonic prison for singer Thom Yorke, heightening the sense of isolation and alienation that was already at the center of the band's music.

Björk has consistently been at the forefront of electronic exploration in music, often constructing entire tracks with nothing but digitally created sounds. As a possible measure of how much she relies on electronics, it is worth noting that there is not a single guitar or electric guitar in her solo catalog. But the electronics never overwhelm the organic power of her voice. They are like a toy in her hands -- an immensely powerful toy, but one that never seems threatening. Her wholehearted embrace of electronics, combined with her unquestioned dominance of them, makes her our most optimistic musician, blasting the matrix apart.

The repackaging and anthologizing that Björk is now undertaking is unprecedented, but it isn't out of character. Her four studio albums have already been accompanied by a huge array of remixes, special editions, books and so on. This volume of extra material bespeaks Björk's own desire to make sense out of her career, to give it a definite shape and trajectory. The "Family Tree" box set seemed to propose one way of framing her career, with the content divided into four sections, to coincide with what she claims are the four "chambers" of her being: Roots, "the ancient things in us"; Beats, "our craving for modern times"; Strings, "our struggle with education and all things academic"; and Words. (We all know she's leaving out that important fifth chamber of her being: Swans, "our craving to wear a bird as a dress.")

Taken together, these four were supposed to add up to a picture of who Björk is, musically and personally. The covers of her albums, each one with a picture of Björk, propose a narrative of rising confidence (and divinity) -- on "Debut" she's a shy, introverted girl; on "Post," a confident force to be reckoned with; on "Homogenic," a kind of cross-cultural warrior/goddess; and on "Vespertine," a delicate, unearthly spirit. In interviews, Björk herself has stressed the way in which each album corresponds to a different character. The music itself tells a story of someone less tied down to the conventions of the world with each release.

These releases are a chance for the world, not least Björk herself, to take stock of her past achievements. Unlike the four studio albums, or the "Family Tree" box set, they present no clear narrative and no carefully shaped career. Rather, they aim to give some sense of the scope of her vision, of the amount of ground she's covered over the last 10 years. There's the live box set, which demonstrates just how far she's stretched her songs in performance. There's the "Volumen" DVD, which collects 21 of her groundbreaking music videos. Perhaps best of all, there's a DVD of her 2001 concert at Covent Garden's Royal Opera House. I was lucky enough to be there, and the show she put on, with the help of harpist Zeena Parkins, electronics duo Matmos, a 12-piece Inuit choir and a 56-piece orchestra, was a rare and beautiful thing.

For all the pleasures of this material, it's worth remembering that not only is this an anomaly in the pop world, it is something that not even the most prestigious living jazz musicians or classical composers have found it necessary to produce. Most musicians are constantly moving on, displaying little interest in albums from five or 10 years ago, but Björk is presenting the last decade of her life and work in all its multimedia glory. This puts me more in mind of the art world than the music world. Specifically, it reminds me of the show that her boyfriend, artist Matthew Barney, put on earlier this year at the Guggenheim Museum in New York.

Barney has essentially spent his time since graduating from Yale creating one, massive piece: his five "Cremaster" films, with accompanying sculptures and props. Björk now counters with her four albums, along with accompanying remixes and live concerts. Both are presenting their work as something to be taken as a whole or not at all. It's not clear whether these productions are just the foibles of a very odd couple indeed, or if they represent a trend in art: increasingly unconstrained by specific media or genre, increasingly grandiose and centering on the vision of a single mind. It's impossible to know. But I suspect that here as well Björk is showing us the way into the future.

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