The Sugarcubes "Here Today, Tomorrow Next Week" NME Review

HUFFIN' AND PUFFIN

THE SUGARCUBES

Here Today, Tomorrow Next Week (One Little Indian LP/Cassette/CD)

SHE WAS laughing! God, that is, at the moment She decided, in one particularly mischievious mood, to create The Most Unlikely Rock Band In The History Of The World Etc.

"And you thought platypusses were weird!", She cackled. "You thought digital watches. Pot Noodle, country dancing and Jonathan King were strange efforts - well just wait till you've seen this lot. They'll be from Bakino Fassa, no, better still, Iceland: they'll be a mixture of pug-ugly boys and moon-faced chicks, and both the chicks will have kids by the creepiest looking lad; they'll dine on extremely photogenic shoreline birdlife and they'll have an incredibly poofy, sickly sweet name -1 dunno, something like The Candyflosses.. ."

Yep, She was laughing her ovaries off alright, but now that joke isn't funny anymore. Almost the entire planet has fallen for Her Frankensteinian monster (she eventually settled on 'The Sugarcubes') and their first LP, the prophetically titled 'Life's Too Good' (it could just as easily have been 'This Is A Piece Of Piss, Innit?'), has sold like ready-sliced bliss. And now, before you've a chance to wake and find it's all been the result of too much Dairylea at bedtime, their next one is upon us.. .

'Here Today, Tomorrow Next Week' it's called, and I suppose the first thing to do is to reassure everyone that the thermonuclear cakes-style success of their debut effort hasn't lead to any watering (cidering?) down of The Sugarcubes' more, erm, quirky, aspects. In truth, mere eccentricity isn't in it. Beautifully produced and often ass-startlingly funky, the record nonetheless bristles with every imaginable squeaked, squonked, hissed, bleaped and yodelled sonic oddity. Never mind Bakino Fassa or Iceland, there are times when it sounds like nothing less than our first recorded contact with the occupants of Ursa Minor!

And those lyrics! Forget that they're primarily in a second language (The 'Cubes speak better English than, for instance, any of the Manchester bands); seldom, outside the realms of the deliberately arty/obscure and the occasional one-off genius like Beefheart, has a music been decorated with such poetry/piffle.

Take 'Eat The Menu'; after Einar has asked the (for an Icelander, psychologically unhinged) question 'why can't I be a cod?', we then learn that the menu of the title includes such delicacies as 'limousines', 'stars', 'moons', 'submarines' and, unsurprisingly, 'glaciers'. 'Puffin Kiev' is, however, apparently 'off'. Shame.

But there's a catch to all this rather glorious goofiness. The Sugarcubes' greatest attribute, their tunnel-visioned individuality, is also the source of their downfall. In their determination to remain a self-contained democracy, they lose sight of the things that made them worth listening to in the first
place. The result is songs that, while commendably short, are (with the exceptions of Tidal Wave' and the swirlingly beauteous 'Planet') too busy, too cluttered, too damn pesky-menace-in-your-face. And the band allow Bjork's falling star of a voice to be constantly hectored and abused by the utterly inane ramblings of Einar. On 'Pump', for instance, the sensuous flow of the eat me/drink me/inhale me sentiment is racked, riddled and wrecked by the idiot growling "I hate you, I hate you" in the background. It's the musical equivalent of letting some twit make bunny-ears behind the Mona Lisa's head...

And it's his antics that ultimately force reaction to this record over the edge that devides amused pleasure from teeth-on-edge irritation. By the end of proceedings the combination of wackiness (however contrived), hippy drippiness and E's pantomimic Wicked Sir Jasperisms make one want to gather the whole shower together and administer a severe kicking of the collective arse. For whatever sets of reasons. The Sugarcubes have decided to play to their weaknesses rather than their strengths, and that's unforgiveabie.

Being a thoroughly nice geezer. I'd have to concede, I guess, that 'Here Today, Tomorrow Next Week', will bring a grin to the laces of committed 'Cubes devotees and Her Upstairs. But for the rest of us it's different; in a year already awash with great LPs (New Order, Inner City, Spaceman 3, Soul II Soul, Stone Roses, De La Soul - I could go on and on), 'Here Today. . ' is worth no more than the most cursory of attention. Life's too short (4)

Denny Kelly