While waiting for a screening of Mean Creek to begin (i'd walked up to the theater, intending to buy tickets for The Brown Bunny but at the last minute i decided vincent gallo's recently relentless self-promotion has been enough to turn me away from what might actually be a pretty beautiful, difficult film. i kind of can't applaud a man who spends half of his generously granted interview time whining about audience members being idiots if they see this movie for a blowjob scene, and the second half of his interview time talking about the self-designed 60-foot billboard depicting that very same scene.), I got to hear my first extended taste of the new Bjork album, Medulla.

I read the New Yorker piece, so I knew the album was almost exclusively scored by human vocal sounds. Some of it is really beautiful – the single, "Oceania," and a couple of other tracks. However, these are interspersed with really, amazingly unlistenable songs featuring the sound of heavy smokers wheezing and sputtering. I couldn't help feeling like Bjork was playing a prank on her critical supporters, wondering how far they would be willing to bend backwards to make the "genius" moniker hold. And I do appreciate Bjork's musical curiosity, but not enough to be voluntarily assaulted by the sound of her trilling over an explosive coughing fit.

P.S. Mean Creek is not very good. Not even a single frame dedicated to blowjobs.