Pitchfork

Photo by Joe Dilworth

Björk's Post, Pitchfork's #20 album of the 1990s, was "a forward-looking amalgam of vibrant electronic pop, animated production, and intelligent beat-mongering," as then-Pitchforker William Morris wrote. A lucky 13 years after its original release, Stereogum has selected the Icelandic songstress' 1995 follow-up to Debut to join R.E.M.'s Automatic for the People and some band called Radiohead's OK Computer as the site's third covers-tribute project.

An array of heavier groups-- including Battles drummer John Stanier's former band, Helmet-- have already singled out album opener "Army of Me", with its industrial-grade bass line, as cover (cannon?) fodder. In Liars' extremely capable hands, the song starts with the clicking of a firearm. A wall of splintered, metallic guitars and crashing drums establish a disorienting foundation for frontman Angus Andrew's moans, distorted almost beyond comprehensibility. The bass line here is slower, crunchier-- a dissolute army knee-deep in muck, not a Gulf War-era unit blasting targets with tidy, CNN-ready precision. "All night in my head it went: Duh nu nuh nu nuh nu nuh de Duh nu nuh nu nuh nu nuh," Andrews writes of that bassline. "In the morning when i woke up i was convinced those notes were the same as some Rage Against The Machine song. I told the guys, we thought it was funny." Scary, too.

MP3:> Liars: "Army of Me"
[from Enjoyed: A Tribute To Björk's Post; out now via Stereogum]