Bjork "Post" [1995]

It must have been exhausting for Bjork to create a body of such consistently undanceable dance music, but on "Post" she manages to accomplish this with sad, insistently minor-key progressions and her minimalist approach to vocal melody (very minimalist: there are only ever five notes she sings -- sometimes whispered, sometimes growled, sometimes shrieked) sulking gloomily over the top of cheap, shimmery programmed beats dumpster-dived from Portishead's back alley. This elfin chanteuse had arrived on the scene a few years earlier, fronting the Sugarcubes as something of a female, Icelandic Bobcat Goldthwait, but by the time of "Post," her schizoid delivery had already been well played-out. She must have recognized this, or her record label did, when they decided to put together a phony-baloney big-band number out of nowhere to capitalize on all those bored 90's white people with enough disposable income to invest in swing-dancing lessons. Thus, for as cloying and repetitive as the rest of "Post" is, I can only imagine an entire CD's worth of material with this Scandinavian munchkin channeling Frank Sinatra. Thank goodness she spared herself and all the rest of us such an indignity; too bad she still gave us this.