Last year’s Publicist UK debut, Forgive Yourself, was a revelation—we ranked it as one of our “Top 5 Records That Tied for #41” in our annual Top 40, but that already seems like short shrift. Featuring members of Municipal Waste, Revocation, Goes Cube and Freshkills, the quartet does dark, morose introspection the right way. They swung for the fences here, and totally make Tori’s piano-and-percussion “Precious Things” their own.
“In the last year, the four of us have traded ideas for covers,” says guitarist David Obuchowski. “I’ve been a fan of Tori Amos since her ‘Crucify’ single came out—so, in other words, I’ve been a fan of hers since I was about 12. Anyway, the song ‘Precious Things’ was always a favorite of mine. Not only is that riff throughout catchy as hell, but I’ve always thought the middle section was super fucking heavy, even though it’s not metal. Zachary [Lipez, vocalist] has been really getting into Tori Amos these last few years, thanks to his girlfriend Zohra Atash [Azar Swan], and musically speaking, Dave [Witte, drums] and Brett [Bamberger, bass] really loved the dynamics of the song, and agreed about its inherent heaviness.
“But the funny thing was, I didn’t really know any of this until after the fact. I mean, we’d discussed a ton of cover ideas, from the Misfits to Pagans to Dream Syndicate, and I didn’t really know that there was one idea anyone liked more than another. But then Dave texted us and was like, ‘Hey, you guys want to cover that Tori Amos song for the Decibel Flexi Series?’ I think that of all the cover ideas we had, this song was definitely the biggest stretch for us, which makes it the best one, in my book.”
It all ties into our first Decibel Yearbook, the 1991-themed March issue, as Amos recorded the original that year for her 1992 debut LP, Little Earthquakes. Enjoy the awesomeness below, then hop in the Deci-lorean to pick up the hard copy on plastic, as well as features on everything that was cool 25 years ago, from GN’R and the Black Album to Arise and even Skid Row.