Music Review: ‘Life’s Too Good’ by The Sugarcubes (1988)
Tangenterine Dream! Now with 100% more Bjork!!!
Tangenterine Dream is a series of short posts on records from my vinyl collection that are a little — or a lot — off the beaten path.
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The Sugarcubes were a lark. But whatever the band’s initial level of commitment, its debut album Life’s Too Good, released on One Little Indian Records in 1988, impressed music fans and critics. The avant-rockers would release two more albums before calling it an extra short winter Icelandic day in 1992. Like many of the best alternative musicians of that time, they were done about the time the counterculture they inspired charged into the mainstream.
Life’s Too Good is a post-punk riot. Lift the neon green and hot pink jacket, slip out the svelte black disc, pull the string, and stare in amaze as confetti and streamers decorate the aether in manifold colors. The guitars conjure unexpected moods, the drums bang around unhinged, and the músík generally refuses to behave. Then, just when you think it’s safe, Björk Guðmundsdóttir begins superheating her vocal chords to incinerate and flatten everything in her path. This is one record you have to point away from yourself to avoid losing an eye.
Unless you’re Generation Alpha, you know Björk went on to a successful solo career. She brought her shriek to the jazzy “It’s Oh So Quiet,” before transforming popular music itself as an arteest who carts her laptop out into the great bosom of Mother Nature to compose in sublime reveries. The Land of Fire and Ice’s foremost force of nature has also acted in acclaimed movies such as The Northman, and this most confounding of careers began as a lark with The Sugarcubes.
Listen to “Birthday” here.
