Bjork, in full bloom

Sometimes it seems pop no longer has room for the true, grand-scale eccentric, but the mad Icelandic songstress Bjork offered violently happy proof to the contrary on Monday at the Hollywood Bowl, in an epic presentation that had fireworks popping by the end of the third song.

The well-paced, nearly 90-minute set covered a lot of ground with breathless, even businesslike efficiency, yet somehow Bjork consistently created palpable atmospheres. Of course, she had help from an eight-piece string section, a harpist, a percussionist and a keyboardist, but they all served her vision and her naked voice’s every turn, from breathy vulnerability to operatic thrust.

Bjork’s 10-year solo career shows that not everyone has to score hit after hit to sell records, or stick to a formula to keep fans coming back. She’s hooked people simply by being her own strange self, with tunes that can be emotionally bare to the point of squirminess -- from her sometimes visceral imagery as much as from her deceptively simple way of stating complex feelings.

On Monday this creative personality was writ large, with grotesque video clips, fancy lighting and more than a dozen high-tech pyro gizmos that occasionally lighted the stage with flames. It was a disorienting kind of total control, and you either surrendered to it or didn’t. Sure, the faithful had a field day, but the show was often captivating to the uninitiated as well. Such numbers as “Hyper Ballad” set so many different musical elements so smoothly into play it was hard not to be fascinated.

Although the songs tended toward torchy themes of unrequited to eternal love, the emotional states Bjork conveyed ranged from the whimsical pining of “Unravel” to the angry thunder of “5 Years.”

The vibe shifted effortlessly from ethereal neediness to tribal-techno celebration, all at the command of this tiny, barefoot woman wearing a short white dress with winglike bodice who waggled her hands in time to the fast beats and bounced all over the stage like a ping-pong ball.

Her choices were utterly fearless, taking transitions in broad sweeps, from a literally fiery frenzy to a tiny moment with only a toy-piano sound and her aching soprano.

Which only enhanced the vertigo, so that by the end one felt surprisingly drained. Still, her more propulsive numbers never overwhelmed the quieter bits, which resonated with their own serene power, as when “Cocoon” evoked the isolation of romance, the suspension of two people in a web of their own making.