Björk

On all practical levels, Björk's Family Tree box set is a disaster: it doesn't include her latest single, "It's in Our Hands" (available on the standalone Greatest Hits), and the bulk of the rare material meant to justify this lavish repackaging amounts to an in-studio concert backed by the Brodsky Quartet. Though you'd have to be as rich as Björk or borderline fanatical to already own all of these b-sides (which have, over the years, been scattered across an unparalleled multitude of formats), Family Tree's limited scope and prohibitive cost make it a tremendous letdown in lieu of a complete collection of her wondrous rarities, which are often better and more expressive than the songs on her albums.

Whatever past, present or future Family Tree aims to survey, it foremost announces Björk as a superstar with the standing to compel a conservative American corporation to produce a seemingly handcrafted box set of outmoded three-inch CDs. Four of these miniatures are sleeved in heavily lacquered cardboard (the fifth has its own plastic wallet), and all are encased in a clasped, hard plastic pink shell, replete with cream-colored, blind embossed cardstock sheath. As can be expected, Elektra fobs the incurred production cost off on the consumer: Family Tree lists for about $60, though when you boil it down, contains only two standard compact discs' worth (148 minutes) of music.

The material is split into four sections that Björk, in her uniquely anti-intellectual, fairytale fashion, claims are the four chambers of her being: Roots and Words (the lyric booklet) are obvious enough descriptors, Strings represents her early exposure to academia and classicism, and the Beats chamber houses her fascination with experimentation and possibility. Roots and Strings are both two-disc, three-inch sets in thick, laminated sleeves; the former attempts the impossible task of summarizing Björk's work prior to launching her solo career in 1992. While her screeching first band, Tappi Tikarass, is an understandable exclusion, there's but one track from Kukl, the dark post-punk act she fronted as a teenager from 1983-1986, a band possibly even better than the glorious but often too-absurd Sugarcubes. For their considerable worldwide success, Family Tree reduces The Sugarcubes to just two songs, both from their debut album Life's Too Good: the Icelandic version of "Birthday" ("Ammæli"), and "Mama" (here spelled "Mamma").

With a mere five songs dating from her days in Iceland, any genealogical pretense to this collection is dashed, as it fails utterly to convey the scope of Björk's illustrious career. More than half of Family Tree is made up of recent, minimally orchestrated vocal performances, and most of them are reprised b-sides. The Strings set contains nine live and studio recordings Björk made in 1999 and 2000 with the Brodsky Quartet, functioning as a third, stripped-down greatest hits album. Many of the performances seem rote, but the famed quartet breathes new life into "Play Dead" (the original version is now badly dated by early-90s keyboards), perfects "Bachelorette" as a stately Russian waltz, and backs the only compact disc recording of the superior, naked rendition of "Unravel" Björk has performed since releasing the unnecessarily cluttered version heard on Homogenic and Family Tree's Greatest Hits disc.

Aside from these few great string arrangements, the only show-stopping, invaluable recording in this ornate, overpriced makeup case is a 1991 demo of "The Modern Things", which leads off the carelessly packaged Beats disc. Recorded with 808 State's Graham Massey, its bubbling early-90s techno missives are the perfect accompaniment for this simultaneous embrace and dismissal of electronic music as novelty. The version that wound up on Post was backed by muddy Ninja Tune trip-hop beats, a case of blindly moving away from an exuberant, established sound because change was the order of the day. The other three tracks on the Beats disc-- all previously available b-sides-- are from Massey and former LFO pioneer Mark Bell, the duo that helped Björk transition from alterna-pop pixie to electronica's regal ice princess.

In the end, Family Tree is a tease, not only to Björk's diehard fans, but to anyone who shells out for whatever rarity draws them in. Her self-selected, twelve-track Greatest Hits disc-- the only full-sized CD in the set-- differs by only four songs from the already available, fan-selected Greatest Hits, and contains no rarities; beyond the palatable but monotonous Brodsky Quartet material, the three-inch discs offer a mere trio of previously unreleased recordings. It may be inventively designed, but given Björk's history of effusive repackaging ripoffs, and its cost and complication, Family Tree should have sealed her past in exhaustive, artfully considered fashion, once and for all. In assembling this set, Björk felt she was closing the door on her back catalog, but many of her fans are sure to feel she's slammed it in their faces.