Rock on ice
Skykurmolarnir by any other name are the Sugarcubes
Chicago Tribune (CT) - TUESDAY February 27, 1990
By:  Bill Wyman
Edition:  NORTH SPORTS FINAL   Section: TEMPO   Page: 3
Word Count:  778

TEXT:
    In Iceland, where consonants are as thick as snowflakes, Rob Reiner's
last movie might have been called "When Sigtryggur Met Bragi . . ." ; Danny
DeVito migh have directed "The War of the Ornolfsdottirs." And Johnny
Cash's biggest hit might have been "A Boy Named Bjork."

    In Iceland, the bizarre pop ensemble that gave the world the
hysterical, moaning, cathartic hit single "Birthday" is called
Skykurmolarnir.

    But we know them as the Sugarcubes, and it is under that name that the
six-person ensemble will be playing the Riviera Nightclub tonight,
double-billed with the upbeat British popmeisters the Primitives.
    The band is touring on the success of its second album, the glossy,
engaging and somewhat awkwardly entitled "Here Today, Tomorrow Next Week."
The first record, "Life's Too Good," was released in late 1988; within a
year, the band was the hippest thing on radio, and a generation of
rock-loving youth had taken the 'Cubes to heart. Last summer, the band
toured the world with New Order and PiL on the magnificent "Monsters of
Synth" tour.

    The band's origins are in Iceland's tiny avant-garde, in a loosely
allied "company" named Bad Taste. That name, said pixilated lead singer
Bjork Gudmundsottir, was simply taken from the epithets hurled at the group
by less than sympathetic onlookers.

    The name gave the group its first commercial success.

    "We'd been working for years and years," said Bjork, who generally goes
by her first name, speaking from a hotel in San Diego. "We'd be presenting
bands, and importing bands, and showing paintings, and putting out books.
And we were always being thought of as having bad taste, as being horrible
children who wouldn't grow up."

    When Iceland suddenly caught the world's fancy around the time of the
Reykjavik summit, Bad Taste responded with a souvenir postcard, an exercise
in kitsch that featured Reagan and Gorbachev against a watercolor sunset,
with the U.S. and Soviet flags waving behind them and the word "peace" in
both Russian and English. "It was horrible," said Bjork, "something in
truly bad taste, and it became a best seller!"

    Before slipping into the avant-garde, Bjork was a child singer who cut
an album at the age of 11. Her irrepresible tendency to sing while at
school caught a teacher's attention, then a record producer's. Bjork
recalls not much liking the producer, but "he had put the idea in the head
of me and my mother."

    She and her mother eventually put out an album, called "Bjork," and
managed to sell more than 2,000 copies of it in a country with a population
of about a quarter million.

    International stardom came later. The Sugarcubes' precourser band was
called Kukl (an Icelandic word for magic), led by 'Cube trumpeter and
singer Orn Singer. Reputedly an art-rocky outfit, Kukl mutated into the
much more pop inclined manifestation of the Sugarcubes in 1986. The other
members of the band are Bragi Olafsson, bass; Margret Ornolfsdottir,
keyboards; Sigtryggur Baldursson, drums; and Thor Eldon, guitar.
    A strange and compelling single called "Ammaeli" featured an
astonishing Bjork vocal. The English version, "Birthday," quickly seduced
the British music press.

    "Birthday," an unlikely hit, is a throbbing, destructive dance number
driven by one of the unlikeliest hooks in pop history: "Eow-wah-woo-hiah,"
sings Bjork, magically and moaningly. "Eow-wah-ay-hee!"

    The song has all the elements that would power the Sugarcubes' first
two albums: the drumming bass, the ringing guitars, the firm belief in
dance beats. Atop it all soars Bjork's voice, now a childlike warble, now
an arena-rock howl.

    Record labels, once they recovered from hearing the song for the first
time, got interested real quick. "Eleven of the biggest companies in the
world called us," Bjork marveled. "But we wouldn't talk to them-we made
them come to Iceland.

    "We didn't think much of record companies. We were our own company at
that point, and all we knew was that they have ruined Elvis Presley, you
know. We thought they were all just criminals."
    The Sugarcubes, protecting their independence, decided to manage
themselves-"We learned lawyer's English," said Bjork-and signed with
several independent labels in Europe, and with mini-major Elektra in the
U.S. "We just didn't know how to deal with the states," she explained.

    College radio in America took the Icelandic band with the
unpronounceable names to heart, and "Life's Too Good" went on to sell
nearly a million copies worldwide.

    Both "Life's Too Good" and the new "Here Today" exhibit the Sugarcubes'
fractured take on reality and life, the latter of which, Bjork sings on
"Life's Too Good," is "both sweet and sour."

CAPTION:
Photo: The Sugarcubes: Thor (from left), Bragi, Einar, Siggi, Bjork and
Magga.