Bjork Brings Outer Space to Vancouver

Bjork brought a little piece of outer space to Deer Lake Park last night, complete with an army of musicians looking for all the world like Icelandic Teletubbies, and scores of costumed concert-goers, dancing in the crowd.

She was in town to promote her new album, Volta, and although I just started listening to this one a few weeks ago, it was familiar enough to dance to and the lovely Bjork played a wide variety of hits from her repertoire while the crowd ate it up.

I'm generally not a fan of going early to concerts and waiting around for the show to start. Had I known that this one was going to start at 8 PM I would have gone later, but I wanted to make absolutely sure that I wasn't going to miss Bjork and that meant wandering around the park getting a snack and a beer and listening to the opening band. It could have been much worse, clearly - a gorgeous park on a sunny evening filled with all kinds of quirky characters for people-watching.

Being a relatively early, all-ages show, there were many more children than I expected, being rocked to sleep (???) with parental hands covering their ears. At least their parents have their priorities in order, although you might have thought a babysitter would come in handy.

When Bjork did finally come on stage, she started out with a few slower songs and not too much dancing, but soon worked herself up into a frenzy of howling, writhing and contorting - as if she was truly embodying her music - and didn't take a break for the entire show. I found myself grinning to myself a few times during the show and not even realizing it. It's the kind of feeling that you get when you realize you've been transported to another place where green lasers and pom-poms seem to go together perfectly in a suburban park.

Awesome, awesome night. I'm listening to Volta on repeat today trying to hang onto it a little longer...

Image courtesy of vasho on flickr.