Boston Globe  1993-11-11

By Jim Sullivan


"Bjork Speaks Out On Music And Mania"


It is quite conceivable that most pop music fans look at the evolution
and recent emergence of Bjork -- solo artist-- this way:

The 27-year-old, pixi'esque singer of Iceland's Sugar cubes dumps her 
loony-goony pals and goes solo with an album called "Debut." She chucks 
the abrasivenessand perceived arogance of the Sugarcvubes: she moves 
away from more chatic, cut-and-paste rock and toward jazz, rave and 
ambient house. There's less cynicism and sarcasm, more hope and bueaty. 
Operatice touches even. ANd her album is more successful than the 
Sugarcubes'.

While some of the above is certainly true, Bjorks sees it this way: 
First of all, despite what you may have read, she does not consider 
herself the former singer of the Sugarcubes. She is the singer of a band 
on hiatus, and she is certainly not in a mood to dis her mates and 
proclaim herself a solo queen.

"It's happy," she says of the Sugarcubes' situation on the phone from a 
London studio. "We meet and get really drunk and write silly songs and 
that situation is still going on. But we've never been a full-time band 
and we probably never will be.

The band members, initially, were six friends who gto together to wreite 
poetry and publish books in 1986. The music grew out of that. "We got 
drunk sometimes and from stupid jokes formed the Sugarcubes, which was 
the most stupid name we could think of, kind of similar to the Monkees. 
And, ironically enough, that became the most serious thing of all of the 
things we've done in our life."

Yes: "Drunk" and "silly" are two of the singer-songwriter's favorite 
words.

Bjork, who doesn't use her last name, Gutmundsdottir, says she 
understands that some people saw the Sugarcubes on stage and saw 
arrogance. "I know exactly what you mean," she says. "but the funny 
thing is most people think famous musicians are big-time leaders who 
control their own lives, but it's the other way around: They're at the 
bottom of the pile. ANd that was our ecperience. You have to sit and 
stand like everybody tells you and smile at the right moment. You have 
to learn more behavior patterns than the Queen of England, beionf there 
with just the right amount of leather trousere snad rebel-ness, which 
has got nothgin to do with beinf a rebel. A lot of the music business is 
just (expetive) and abuse." Bjork and the 'cubes acted out their 
rebelliousness by sometimes behaving bizarrely, inexplicably, on stage.

Now, Bjork says, she has to be more responsible. "Before I had to just 
make sure I wasn't hoarse and I remembered my lyrics and just kind of 
have fun with my friends," she says. "Now, I'm like the musical 
director. The lights have to be right, the sound has to be right, every 
little thing like the tickets and how the people are treated. And the 
support band, the music. But then again I try to forget it while I'm 
playing the songs and just disappear into the music."

Stylistically, Bjork has moved away from the SAugarcubes' sometimes 
jarring rock. The ethereal voice is still there, of course, but there is 
more flow, texture and atmospherics in the music. There's a subtle, 
jazzy feeling.

Bjork looks at the differences this way. "The SUgarcubes are basically, 
the kind of mood you are in when you go out with your friends and have a 
luagh, tell jokes. And with me, one my own, it's more sort of me in the 
athroom, so definitely, yes, you've got lots of hope and I just love 
things that are routine, just going to shop and buying something to 
cook. You find all these down-to-earth things. I'm just a big fan of 
them. I want to write music about jumping into a cab and getting into a 
conversatiuon with a cab driver and thenrunning outside and its raining 
and maybe getting drunk and dancing all night and coming out and there's 
this clash of atmosphere going on. People look at (what I'm doing now) 
and say 'What happened to other side?" To me, this is very natural, like 
what I've been doing the past 10 years and the SUgarcubes is the 
exception.

One of the main reasons Bjork made "Debut," was she wanted to try being 
the main cook stirring the stew. In the Sugarcubes, she says, "no one 
controls anyone and everybody does what they want and anarchy rises. I 
started to think maybe that wasn't the only solution. I guess it's just 
a typical growing-up thing: Sometimes you compromise too much when you 
try to please everyone - you're not pleasing anyone. So maybe we should 
change the rules of the game. I always had strong opinions from Day 1 
what I thought music should be like, every little detail, but it always 
felt morally incorrect to me."

Bjork's "Debut" mixes styles and emotions, often within the same song. 
The single and video, "Human Behavior," is an ominous, yet whimsical, 
look at where humans fit in the animal food chain. "Violently Happy" 
brings together two works not usually linked together, as Bjork 
proclaims herself "violently happy" over a shimmering melody.

I've got no intentions of pretending that life is simpler than it is," 
she says. "I mean, say, if you are completely in love with someone, 
which is usally quite a one-way sort of strong emotion - you still are a 
little bit confused because you broke your ankle or your grandma died. I 
think you shouldn't pretend that life is just one thing. I just don't 
want to pretend. If someone comes up to me and says 'I loved your 
performance,' I want to smack them in the face, because that just means 
I didn't do what I intended to do. Because performing means that I was 
lying," she says, "I just guess it's the school I come from, being 
brought up in the punk era, where you are just yourself."

So, back to "Violently Happy," which Bjork says was inspired by her 
falling madly in love with someone sho lives "at the other end of the 
world." She admits the experience gave her "this very big emotion in 
your body, about 10 pounds larger than yourself."

So: Can love last?

"I think love changes every day," Bjork says, after a pause. "To try and 
remember again every day why someone makes you feel a certain way. And I 
think if you want to freeze something and maintain a certain situation, 
that's the death, because, you know, nothing stays forever."