Boston Globe 2001-10-12 By Steve Greenlee "Lullabies of birdland" On her CD 'Vespertine,' a seductive dreamscape of aching vocals and nocturnal melodies, Bjork delves into an interior world Before we talk about the elegance of her music, the extremes of her art, the endlessness of her creativity, or the elaborateness of her tour, we need to deal with the swan. You remember the swan. Bjork showed up at this year's Academy Awards wearing a giant imitation swan as a dress, complete with large egg attached to her ankle. The bird shows up again on the cover of her new album, "Vespertine." So the question is this, Bjork: What is with the swan? "I don't really know," she says on the phone from France, in that sweet, quiet voice of hers. She says there's no significance to it. "My friend, whom I've known for many years, it was in his first collection. He was very shy, an up-and-coming designer. I saw it and said, 'Let's go for it.' ... If it had been three years ago or three years from now, I might have said, 'I don't think so.'" Well, all right then. We can move on. Bjork, who performs a sold-out show tonight at the Wang Center, has made some of the most inventive, consistently interesting pop music of the past decade. She is also immensely modest on the phone. Compliments about her work are received with "Oh, thank you, thank you very much." You can almost hear her blush. Her new CD, "Vespertine," is a testament to her quiet confidence. The album, a series of 12 high-tech lullabies for adults, seduces you with its soundscapes of evening-song instrumentation: celestes, music boxes, harps, and strings mixed with beats constructed from "found sounds" - cards shuffling, utensils tapping - all of it creating a background onto which she paints her aching yet soothing voice and emotive melodies. It's the antithesis of her previous album, the marvelously brash "Homogenic," whose harsh clanks and swelling strings surrounded growling, oscillating vocals. "For me, 'Homogenic' was very extroverted - it's me after drinking four cappuccinos, and it's Friday night, and I go out and meet a lot of people. It's that sort of outgoing mood; you're ready to take on the world and communicate. It's about being vulnerable and strong," says Bjork, whose pixieish looks and childlike voice belie her 35 years. "I knew I wanted to do an album that was the opposite, that was very internal ... what I am like when I come home and close the door and unplug the phone and close my eyes and what I find there. I find a lot of fun things and a lot of silly things, and also a lot of painful things." The word "vespertine," after all, refers to that which blossoms in the evening. It's an apt description not only for the music but also for the lyrics. For these are the things Bjork thinks about when the sun vanishes, the things that occupy her mind as she falls asleep. The first single, "The Hidden Place," is about retreating to the sanctuary of a loving relationship. "Undo" offers comfort to the afflicted: "It's not meant to be a strife / it's not meant to be a struggle uphill." The infectious "It's Not Up to You" philosophizes on nothing less than life itself: "If you leave it alone / it might just happen / anyway." The amazing thing about Bjork's music, though, is how natural it sounds, considering that it's a complex marriage of the ancient and the futuristic. Extremes define her songs, with their elements of techno and classical, choral music and simple pop. This shouldn't come as a surprise when you learn that her parents were Luddites who enrolled her in classical music school when she was 5. It wasn't until she was an adult, she says, that she embraced all that is high tech. "I was force- fed Beethoven and Bach," says Bjork, who grew up in Iceland and has lived in London since 1993. "When I was 15, I rebelled against it. I joined a punk band. I didn't want anything to do with a long-dead German guy whose name begins with the letter B. I sort of put it aside for 15 years." In recent years, that classical training has resurfaced. She hired a string octet for "Homogenic," and she uses strings, choirs, and bells throughout "Vespertine." When she performs in Boston, she'll have with her a 54-piece orchestra, a choir, and a harpist. "With this album, I guess I was, for the first time, letting go of my puritanism and just admitting - you reach that age where you go, 'Come on, this stuff influenced you. Just let it seep through.' ... I'm still very, very, very aware that the music I make is pop music, and I'm very proud of it, and I have no ambition to become a serious musician." That might sound like an odd thing for her to say; after all, she's about as serious as pop musicians get. With a legion of devoted fans around the world, Bjork is also as critically acclaimed as pop musicians get. And it's not just the innovations she brings to her arrangements. Her songwriting skills, too, are respected; jazz pianist Jason Moran recorded an elegant version of her tune "Joga" last year. She's also become quite the serious actress. After a superb performance in 1990's mystical film "The Juniper Tree," she turned in a downright stellar one in last year's "Dancer in the Dark," for which she was named best actress at the Cannes Film Festival. All of this might make you think she's frustrated that her music isn't on the radio more often - after all, airplay translates into album sales, and despite a multitude of four-star ratings, "Vespertine" debuted only at No. 19 on the Billboard album chart and has fallen steadily from there. But she's not bitter about it. She says people who like her kind of music will seek it out. Nor can she be goaded into saying anything bad about any of the music topping the charts these days. "My music has never been played on the radio," she says, not a trace of resentment in her voice. "I don't know. It doesn't worry me that much. ... I don't expect it."