FEATURE:
Today Is Her Birthday
The Sugarcubes’ Life’s Too Good at Thirty-Five
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AN album anniversary that almost slipped me by…
IN THIS PHOTO: The Sugarcubes in 1988
it is hard to get on top of all of them! I did want to mark the approaching thirty-fifth anniversary of The Sugarcubes’ debut, Life’s Too Good. People might not know about the group, but you will have heard of their lead singer, Björk. Even though she released an album as a child in 1977, her debut album, Debut, came out in 1993. This was many people’s first exposure to an artist who would change the world of music. Life’s Too Good was released on 25th April, 1988 in the U.K. through One Little Indian (now One Little Independent Records). The group consisted of veterans of Reykjavík's (Iceland) early-1980s Rock scene. They combined Post-Punk with humorous and uplifting Pop. The title is kind of ironic in that sense! If they weren’t 100% convinced Life’s Too Good, then the album definitely does put the listener in a better frame of mind. Go and buy the album on vinyl, as it still sound so essential and fresh after thirty-five years. The group didn’t intend for their music to be taken necessarily seriously. They did go on to make two further albums. 1989’s Here Today, Tomorrow Next Week!, and 1992’s Stick Around for Joy did not reach the same heights as their debut – although the later does feature one of their best songs in the form of Hit. Reaching number-one in the Indie chart in the U.K., people did latch onto music that would have been quite foreign and new to most. Not much Icelandic music had infiltrated the U.K. prior to this point - and it would be the first experience many had with Björk.
It is worth coming to some reviews of a brilliant album turning thirty-five very soon. Marking its thirtieth anniversary, The Quietus highlighted the colourful and less serious take on Post-Punk. How many people in 1988 could have guessed that Björk would be a huge name and would forge this decades-long career where she is still making albums and touring today? Life’s Too Good is a wonderful and kaleidoscopic album that mixes weirdness and beauty. It is beguiling to behold:
“Daft as it was, in its own way, Life’s Too Good (named for a jokey "optimistic complaint" made by an impoverished artist friend of the band on being given a cup of coffee and a cigarette) was a manifesto. The band were all punk and post-punk veterans, Björk in particular having been queen of the Reykjavik scene since age 11. On the demise of their none-more-dark, black-clad post-punk supergroup Kukl, they formed a joke band, The Sugarcubes (named for the form of nutrition they were driven to on tours). The record label set up by the band and their associates, Smekkyleysa, translates as "bad taste", from Picasso’s dictum “good taste and frugality are the enemies of creativity”. Daftness was, for this bunch of tricksters, a statement. You can see the echoes of Smekkleysa’s attitude in the Best Party, the gang of punk survivors, comedians and musicians that took over Reykjavik’s city council in the wake of the Icelandic banking crash (indeed, Sugarcubes vocalist Einar Orn was tangentially involved, and Reykjavik mayor Jon Gnarr, a former punk poet, was a Sugarcubes mucker). When nothing makes sense any more, why not vote for nonsense?
The Sugarcubes debut album dispenses with Picasso’s despised frugality by having its sleeve printed in five acid-bright colours; as for good taste, well… it can’t quite make its mind up about that. It starts on a serious note, a suitably artistic topic: the last thoughts of a man shot at dawn for treachery in the Spanish Civil War. Yet the weighty subject is sent spinning into uncertainty by king clown Einar, the trickster rapper, gibbering on about teaching the angels to play harmonica. And yet... “When the sun rises… I will not see/ It was worth it.”
Swirling, Cure-ish guitar and loping bass seem all present and correct for a tastefully late-80s goth-tinged guitar band, but don’t swoon too soon; there’s an awkward thorn, an inappropriate laugh, a naked bum round every corner with this album.
Round the first bend, for example: screeeeeee! The creepy baby-Ballardisms of ‘Motorcrash’, one of the many infantile, surreal scenarios in Life’s Too Good’s lyrics, with a bicycling Björk chancing upon a car accident, and stealing away an injured woman to nurse in her house. Björk’s childlike lyrical approach, one source of the patronising wild-child/pixie image that dogs her career to this day, owed much to her twin obsessions with Gunter Grass’ The Tin Drum and Georges Batailles’ Story Of The Eye, with whimsical meanderings that could suddenly plunge into dark or perverse thickets without warning (see also the unsettling ‘Sick For Toys’). As Einar puts it over horn-gilded guitar-pop so frisky it could be a low-budget Huey Lewis And The News: “Believe you me, I know what innocent looks like/ And it wasn’t there after she got that bicycle.”
To many ears at the time, Einar was the fly in The Sugarcubes' ointment; the prickly, ridiculous thorn that scratched the band’s innate gorgeousness uncomfortably. The inkies would have been happy if the Cubes ditched Einar, and delectable cover star, ready-to-iconise pixie-woman-puffin-eater-wild-child-pick-your-patronising-daydream Björk was let free, as on the ever-breathtaking ‘Birthday’, (Melody Maker single of the week at the time and a breakout hit in both the US and the UK), to soar and ululate through fresh-faced, odd-angled dream pop and birds sewn in your knickers.
But that’s not the way The Sugarcubes wanted it. They wanted it, as is Icelanders’ wont, their own weird way. ‘Blue-Eyed Pop’ is the mission statement, contrasting a consumer dream of a 50s US pop dream (“It’s just fabulous to go twisting… we all crave a hot dog splashed with noise”) with the wilder northern European model The Sugarcubes propose (“I will look here inside this disco/ It is so hot hot hot, we melt together like tigers and are dancing together”). A little disingenuous - unique as they are, The Sugarcubes do have some sonic forebears in the cartoonish exuberances of The Cramps and, in particular, The B-52’s, and also in the primary coloured, awkward dance-frenzy of Talking Heads.
All they borrow, though, is tuned to their own thrawn purposes, ‘Delicious Demon’ ringing with riddles of Norse gnomicness: “To plough takes two as well/ Only one to hold up the sky”, “Two men need money but one money needs no man”. Often, too, what pop-ness is here, is in attitude more than sound, with their post punk heritage coming through strongly in Björk’s agonised wails and the music’s dark grind and lurch.
And the album churns, beneath its batting eyelashes, with base and powerful instincts, from the threatening sexuality of ‘Cold Sweat’ with its grindingly heavy punk-funk, to the longing for the maternal enwombing of security of ‘Mama’, Björk howling as passionately as for any love song. As the theological bimble of ‘Deus’ - intercut with Björk’s hallucinations about massive collars - puts it, “”To create a universe/ You must taste the forbidden fruit”.
I am going to finish up with a review from The Line of Best Fit. They took a look at The Sugarcubes’ Life’s Too Good in 2015. After twenty-seven years, the album was still reaching new listeners and making an impact. We know that Björk went on to enormous things, but the band was not just her and a few others. It was a collaborative effort. An album where the instrumentation and songwriting is as impactful as the vocals:
“Released during a time when post-punk had become synonymous with monochrome and dour connotations of the gothic, Iceland’s The Sugarcubes’ comparably upbeat Life’s Too Good - about to be reissued on vinyl by One Little Indian - counteracted the often stringent seriousness of the alternative '80s, subverting the vitriol of the earlier post-punk movement by offering a colourful and imaginative substitute.
The band’s most revered and well-known single "Birthday" sounded emphatically jovial in the angry wake of Crass, ‘passe punk’ and over produced new wave. Pop at its esoteric finest, it was lauded by the likes of John Peel and Melody Maker; reached #2 in the indie charts, but was criminally overlooked in the official UK chart, entering it at just #65. A travesty - yes, especially considering it is the - if not one of - the most perfect pop songs ever recorded: sounding just as wide eyed and inspired now as it did then, its weird, melodic brilliance and depiction of childhood abandon evokes a certain kind of whimsical nostalgia, while Björk's piercing, defiant shrieks and seemingly cryptic lyricism would become a trademark of her subsequent solo work.
Much like The B52’s and Talking Heads, The Sugarcubes proved that post-punk could be playful and seriousness could be silly. "Birthday", despite being The Sugarcubes’ defining moment, isn’t indicative of the debut as a whole, though. In fact, as with some of the best LP’s, it’s hard to place this album within a specific genre, a persistent theme even in Björk's previous venutres. Having begun recording music as early as 1977, when she released Björk Guðmundsdóttir - an album of sickly sweet covers of rock songs - she soon found herself in bands that were similarly averse to the restrictions of meaningless categories.
Having previously explored punk (Spit and Snot, Tappi Tikarrass), jazz-fusion (Exodus) and gothic rock (KUKL), here, they dabble in myriad styles: from indie pop to experimental and dance; "Mama" and "Deus"’s prominent bass and jagged guitar lines, for example, recall the dub-punk fusion often extolled by the likes of Public Image Ltd. et al, while "Coldsweat"’s brooding, heavy punk-funk is very much of its time. The deceptively titled "Fucking In Rhythm And Sorrow" is a clever album closer, sounding like the witty antithesis of the experimental pop clamour that came before it. Björk tells the tale of a woman coming home from a bar to find a naked man lying depressed on her living room floor, as an erratic, skiffle-like rhythm builds: “You should use the pain and sorrow / To fill you up with power / Life’s both sweet and sour!” she howls. Something to keep in mind during those moments of despondency and existential crisis.
Björk's idiosyncratic voice might be the main prevailing aspect here, but however fleeting their existence was, The Sugarcubes were very much a band, with each member having their own respective pedigree in various other outfits prior to their formation. All members had previously been in various post-punk or experimental groups - their origins tracing back to the likes of Theyr and of course KUKL - while some even collaborated with Current 93 and various members of Psychic TV. The creation of The Sugarcubes was a direct result of the negation of the anarcho-punk route (KUKL released two record on Crass’ label) and the desire to create something more accessible. Einar’s spoken word contributions are as imperative as they are bizarre, and the contrast between his inane discourse and Björk's more popular vocalisations gives the band their famed uniqueness.
Despite its moments of innate pop brilliance, there remains a dark chaos on Life’s Too Good - repressed, but ever-present. An understated classic, and by far the band's best album, it still sounds vital 27 years since its initial release. It's strange but accessible, silly but genius, and ultimately unfailing from start to finish”.
Turning thirty-five on 25th April, I wanted to spend some time showing love for an incredible album. Life’s Too Good might have been slightly ironic with its title but, every time you hear the 1988 album, it takes you somewhere special. If you have not heard this for a while, it is a perfect moment to spin an incredible debut. Led by the peerless Björk, The Sugarcubes’ Life’s Too Good will be adored…
FOR decades to come.