Björk
Vespertine
Elektra

Since former Sugarcubes singer Björk launched her solo career in 1993 with Debut, she has ventured through milk bars and forests pitch-dark, leading her listeners on a hunt through emotional landscapes. She even shuffled us through a musical with last year's Selmasongs, the soundtrack to Dancer in the Dark (in which she starred), which earned her a Grammy nomination. With her fourth solo LP, Vespertine Björk takes a break, nestling into the uncharted nooks and crannies of the domestic.

On previous albums, Björk has established herself as the music industry's quirky Icelandic songstress. Vespertine is certainly recognizable as the work of the pop pixie, but it's not exactly pop.

It's no accident that Vespertine is named after evening prayers sung by monks, and that the word itself means "things flourishing in the evening." There's something reminiscent of the haziness of dusk in each of the 12 tracks. Complete with harps, music boxes, an Inuit choir and the fuzzy beats of San Francisco's Matmos, Vespertine is quiet even at its loudest.

Lyrically, Björk makes great use of the lines of poet e e cummings in "Sun in My Mouth" and those of film director Harmony Korine in "Harm of Will."

In the opening track aptly titled, "Hidden Place," Björk sings,

I'm so close to tear
And so close to
Simply calling you up
And simply suggesting
We go to that hidden place...

And if you choose to continue listening to the rest of the album, you go. From the gentle crooning of "Undo" and the falling-icicles quality of the instrumental "Frosti" to the anthem of surrender in the album's closing track, "Unison," Vespertine is Björk's confession of the private and personal.

Missing from Vespertine are her frequent quasi-operatic outbursts and trademark nonsensical incantations. Blending notes similar to those of her earlier "Possibly Maybe," "Cocoon" only hatches into a full-blown whisper. But she's whispering to us from across the kitchen table, and the unexpected delicacy and subtleties of Vespertine are proof that she wants us to lean in and listen.

Of course, she may make you want to raise an eyebrow or run screaming when she repeatedly chants "I love him" in "Pagan Poetry," but it's a small price to pay for the other 55 minutes and 26 seconds. Best served hermit-style.

— Lavina Lee (lavina at flakmag dot com)