1989 09 The Sugarcubes, The Catalogue

INTERVIEW

the sugarcubes

In New York with Martin Aston

New Order's Barney has a stomach ulcer, the triple NO/PiL/ Sugarcube bill currently touring America - cringingly titled The Monsters Of Alternative Rock Tour’ - has had to reroute back to Detroit, and Einar has had enough. “We aren’t even going to attend our own Bad Taste evening," he fumes down the phone, referring to tonight's Icelandic bill of Bless/Reptile/Ham + poetry readings, sponsored by The Sugarcubes. That's 13 people they've flown into New York, so when the next snidey comment about Bjork counting their merchandising money (a staggering £200,000), remember where it gets spent. Meanwhile, Bragi has his next book out this year, alongside his, Einar and Thor's first books translated into English for the first time. Money and integrity? “Don’t talk to me about that," One Little Indian’s Derek Birkett sighs. “They have this vision of releasing a live album for 99p early next year, which is more than it’ll cost to produce, and hardly the right career move either. Most bands would save the material until much later."

Everything is topsy-turvy. They sing about, “limousines, oranges, stars, moons, submarines, jeeps, glaciers, cars, caterpillars, even grapes,” (“Eat The Menu”) on the new “Here Today, Tomorrow Next Week” album, and write weighty, symbolist /DaDa tomes of poetry at home. The two are connected; the sugar is cubed. Or something. Meanwhile, the New Music Seminar has just begun. I start putting words in Einar’s mouth; he can make a nice fish supper or eat the menu if he wants...

The New Music Seminar and it’s New Business Ethic qualify for one of your 'Bad Taste' awards.

“No, it qualifies for hearing this music. In America, there is a need because people didn't know that music like this existed and the industry wasn’t geared toward this pop music. It was mainstream but didn’t get mainstream listening, so it’s necessary to get people and let them know that mainstream music is not the only music in the world. Our music is just as mainstream as Tiffany, although the emphasis on mainstream is not so strong. But mainstream music is not wrong, because we play mainstream pop. But Tiffany is regarded as good taste but who says it's good music? Bad Taste wants to challenge the good taste of the world. Why is the New Music Seminar getting bigger and bigger every year? Because people have started seeing what is defined as good taste music every year isn’t valid. For American people, their business has come to an end with this music, like a snake eating it’s own tail. Some clever guy said, 'let’s tap into the alternative scene because things are happening there’.

“When we started Bad Taste, we just wanted to challenge what good taste was because we ourselves didn't know. You’re on an awful slippery intellectual slope saying that. I’m not qualified to define it, because if I do, we will soon turn into good taste. And we aren’t that. And we’ve never behaved like an alternative band. For us, it’s simple. In Iceland, we are only playing to 240,000 people, not even that. Birthday only sold 300 copies. That didn’t deter us from putting out records in the UK and changing music, to how we should sound. We just carry on with what we’re doing. An alternative band is always content with...letters that we have, that we’ve betrayed our punk roots, our link with Crass, but Crass had to stop. They were an alternative band who ended up preaching to the converted. So they had to stop.”

You see yourselves as non-alternative’

“British people call us, ‘pioneers of perverted pop’, but we’re just a pop group. It’s blue-eyed pop. We aren’t perverts, we're normal people. Although some people might not think so. It’s like people who say we’re a bit strange because we come from Iceland. That's regressive nationalism. But I agree, we might be bringing something new to pop but we don't know what it could be. Let’s bring chaos to pop, to the mainstream.”

The New Order/PiL/The Sugarcubes ‘Monsters Of Alternative Rock’ bill was a travesty of the independent/alternative ethic.

“PiL, New Order, they are the groups I started listening to, the reason I started listening to punk music. 10-12 years later, a two year old band is supporting them and a lot of reasons why we’re there is because of them in the beginning. I think it is a good headline for a concert because I don’t think that it should be three unknown bands. Look at the audience who are coming. I saw maybe 10 to 15 punks out of 20,000 which is very strange to see. In the UK, people dress up according to which type of music they listen to - The Cure and Mission get hippies. Why should alternative music be played to only 50/60 people in a club? I agree with PiL and New Order, they’ve stuck to their guns over the years. But New Order and PiL threw fits when we started playing. People are coming in during the set, but we do brilliantly. The tour has been quite easy, blowing New Order and PiL off stage. That’s quite a nice thought. We're doing well on merchandising. The worst thing is how long we’ve been away from Iceland. There, we don’t have a schedule. You can concentrate on other traits. We can rehearse and relax. We can be normal.”

You’re notoriously difficult to organise.

“We are all organised in all the little ways. We have a certain schedule, a plan of sleeping, working, drinking, going to the shops, but our sense of timing is never the same, except when we get on stage. We’re always one hour ahead or behind another’s breakfast.

Elektra Records have tried to process and refine The Sugarcubes to sell you across the USA.

“When we did the first tour, there were lots of hassles going on, as people kept trying to see to our needs. ’Are you alright’, this kind of question. 'Have a nice day’. We couldn’t understand what they were telling us. We went into hiding for one gig, and since then, it’s been brilliant. We don’t have a manager to tell us where and when to be, leading the flock. We just have a tour manager to get us between concerts. People in the US find us strange. But Elektra treat us very well. We don’t feel like we’re working with a major label over here. They’re always asking us if we wanted tickets for Hard Rock Cafe, like little celebrity premiers, but we always said no, so they stopped doing it. They’ve not tried to control that chaos. They realise that this is a difficult band to work with but when we talk to other people about what we have seen, we know we are the most amicable people to work with. “Majors usually don't sign bands to develop musical talent which means groups usually don't have it. With us, they do, so they can leave that and concentrate on marketing. We got into trouble with the video for 'Cold Sweat’, with showing a stomach because it was 'too sexually suggestive', but Elektra still said OK.”

Rumours have gone round that some kind of competitive spirit exists between the three bands and that the stakes are what drugs can be consumed.

“That’s silly. Why take drugs when we can drink them under the table?”

TWO DAYS later, the tour ends at New Jersey’s Meadowlands basketball stadium, capacity 18,000; thousands queue for fries and shakes, there are just 10 to 15 fans dressed in black. It’s an extraordinary sight. John Lydon shouts, 'I can’t hear you at the back.’ The Sugarcubes - offered second billing above PiL but only accepting the tour if they could go on first with the minimum of fuss (although they still got paid as second on the bill) - dance like lobsters and scream at the crowd. “See you next time,” Einar says, disappearing off toward the dressing room. “See you in 13 days. 364 days. 3023 days...”

One day later, Bjork, Einar, Siggi and Bragi sit in Elektra's Records boardroom, 26 floors up on Rockafella Plaza, mid-town Westside New York. Magga is less than two weeks away from having a baby girl and husband Thor has already flown home to be with her. Meanwhile, The Sugarcubes have sold 750,000 copies of "Life's Too Good”, proving their bewitching, surrealist pop-art has something the mainstream needs.

Or at least wants, or can’t put down. You tell us. Either way, is....

America, sane or insane?

Einar: “They've got Mike Tyson, he’s insane, and I'm going to watch him fight tomorrow, live on HBO.”

You’re into American television.

E: Absolutely.

Bjork: I'm into amusement parks for children. I took my kid down there so he’s probably seen more Disneylands, Sea Worlds, amusement parks, museums, dinosaur exhibitions than any American kid. Every town we get to, we look in the hotel booklet for what’s on for children and go. We are actually getting very good at going to very American places, picking up very interesting things, ignoring as many people as possible and leaving very happy."

Bragi: “The money and the food are the best.” 

Siggi: ‘You can get anything. You can go to a petrol station and buy fruit salad. You can buy Icelandic opal mints at a truck stop in the middle of the desert. They’re like breath fresheners. But they were old.”

Is this what the new album's “Eat The Menu” is about?

E: "'Eat The Menu’ is like going to a restaurant and having too much choice and then getting the food and not wanting it."

B: “All the portions are so big.”

Br: “Then you go to Germany and get the food there, and you’re really hungry, but it’s such stupid food that you think, ‘oh no, I need to go to the toilet’. English food is the best. Fish and chips. Simple and quick.”

B: "Fulfilling? Yes.”

Br: “It’s the only dish I finish."

S:“The first thing I'm going to do when I get back to Iceland is buy a fillet of fish, take it back home, boil it, add a few potatoes, and melt some butter.”

B: "Haven't you forgot the main thing? Aren’t you going to eat it?”

What do you like most about America, and why?

E: “I like boxing and World Federation wrestling because we don’t have it in Iceland." 

B: “It’s New York for me, probably for the same reason as Einar. It’s the opposite to Iceland."

Is “Dream TV” also written in and about America?

E: “No, it’s written in England, about me being a housespouse for a year. I've got total sympathy for all housewives. What I did was I cooked food and watched TV and went out around 12 o’clock, bought food, no, just snacks, but two litres of white wine, made sure that I could catch the one o’clock news and then ’Neighbours’ which had just started in Iceland. Watching that with the white wine, I fell asleep and woke up about five o'clock when my ex-wife was about to return home from college, and just watched TV. I then woke up one night and discovered that I was dreaming last week’s television programmes."

Are “Eat The Menu” and “Dream TV” anything to do with the idea that “Life’s Too Good”?

S: “It’s an extension of that joke."

Br: “That 's one thing that newspapers should print - last week’s TV programmes."

S: “Just to be able to know what you missed.” 

Br: “And what you’ve seen. That's pretty important. Like, 'I didn't want to see that’...”

S: “Or ‘I deliberately missed that'.

Br: "Because we concentrate too much on the present and the future. The future is an obsession. The past is the most important time."

(Braggi and Bjork start arguing in Icelandic)

B: “I’m not compatible with people who are obsessive with the past, that’s my point.”

S: “It’s fun, going with Braggi to visit Bjork or going with Bjork to visit Braggi, because their tastes in art and music are so unalike, it's a constant source of amusement.”

B: "I still think Braggi has the most interesting taste, I must say. At least he's got style.”

Talking about the past, present and future, why have you called the album ‘Here Today, Tomorrow Next Week.?

Br: "Because we found it amusing in Russia. That’s where it was conceived.”

S: “When you go to the Soviet Union, one of the things you do most is wait. And then you wait a little more, and then you’re asked to wait. It’s one of the places that you wish for things to happen quickly and efficiently. So 'Here Today, Tomorrow Next Week', is like, ‘let’s get it on, things are happening fast’.”

B: “I think it's about worshipping the next minute, what’s about to come.”

S: “As I said, the obsession with 'future'.”

E: “But at the same time, it’s a quote from Wind In The Willows, from around 1930, when Ratty gets a car and says, ‘here today..tomorrow next week!' and flies off! And for us, or at least for me, people have said, ‘The Sugarcubes are one-hit wonders, here today, gone tomorrow,' but we’re not. We are, and we’re going to be."

Do you want to be a pop group who tour every year and have one hit single after another?

B: "Not necessarily. But first of all, we have to write proper pop songs.”

E: “But we aren’t going to write a song like 'When Will I Be Famous?' That is tacky.”

Br: “Or songs about South Africa.”

B: “Oh-oh, we’re coming to a very dangerous moment...”

S: “There are so many bands trying to be not-poppy. It always comes out clumsily and dishonestly. There's no need to name any groups.”

E: “The Sugar-integrity-cubes. Our middle name.”

S: “We are in the pop music business and like Bjork says, it is our aim to make pure pop music.”

What risks have you taken with the album? Some detractors might say it was a very safe pop record.

E: “We are taking a hell of a risk with this album. We spent a lot of money, the most expensive pop record ever made in Iceland.”

That’s not saying much, is it?

E: "No, but it's saying much for us. But we’re standing by it, saying, ‘this is our record, we produced it ourselves, we produced it ourselves, it’s our statement.”

B: "We had a lot of help from very professional people, and ended up in most cases saying, 'I'm sorry, I know you're very good and everything, but it just wouldn’t be right unless we do it ourselves’. With the mixes, we've done a lot of experiments but finally we realised that the only way to do it was our way.”

S: "We recorded a lot of material but the big problem was mixing it down. Getting the balance."

Do you think your style of pop, a challenging, provocative pop, might take over?

E: "Its going to take over. It’s not a matter of time. We re not interested in time, For us, it’s the same as always, world domination or death, so it’s going to end that way."

Are you compromising anywhere on this mission?

B: “I think that the only compromising we do is hotels. It’s not really a compromise because it’s interesting, and it’s a challenge as well, how to get what you want in a hotel room... to feel free in a hotel room...no limits in a hotel room. We’re staying 50% of our time in hotels, so for me personally, that's the only possible compromise. Some people may say that doing this tour with Public Image and New Order playing in stadiums in front of 20 or 50,000 people is a compromise, but it wasn’t. It was very challenging and exciting. We’d never done it before. We knew it was possible. The first gigs were not very good but after a while, we managed to create an atmosphere in a stadium, with sound and everything. So each gig had a different atmosphere, which I'm really proud of.”

S: “This tour is the biggest ring of fire that we’ve gone through because our ideal environment is a small club, good lighting and good atmosphere - a heavy state of atmosphere. We’ve never been laid as bare as we have this tour, playing in daylight for people that are coming in to the auditorium, slowly but surely, and then gaping at you.”

How did you plan to attract the audience’s attention?

E: “We just made a setlist.”

B: "It was basically us playing to somebodies...and sometimes it became a bit desperate because we weren’t sure who that somebody was."

E: "There were these half-empty seats in this enormous arena, where the top half was full but the main seats were empty, so who were we playing to now? Are we playing to the plastic seats, or the people up there? Of course we were playing to the people up there.

S: Basically, it’s the same thing, playing to huge stadiums or small clubs. You go on stage playing for someone, and it’s about that connection."

But the people up top can’t see your gestures, so you have to exaggerate them.

S: “That's why you have a microphone. We make a lot of noise.

E: “We don’t do anything bigger. That’s the funniest thing about all this - we were told we'd be playing these enormous stages, and we had about the same size of stage area to move in as when we play in England because the back line of PiL and New Order was huge. So we were left at the front, which is very good because we can't retreat into a lightshow or darknes or smoke. We have to perform."

B: I guess that’s something you just have to believe in. I'm not capable of analysing that. It’s the same question as to what makes The Sugarcubes interesting. It’s just seeing whether you like or feel something, so it doesn’t matter if people are miles and miles away, it’s just a question of believing you have something, and to rely upon it to get attention.

But surely there is a difference between getting attention in a small club and a stadium. It's not just noise.

E: “In a small club, you already have their attention. But the funny thing about people here in America is that they say, 'I really love your show’ and actually mean it. I met so many people who only came to see us even though the rest were still flocking in - they didn’t give one hoot about PiL and New Order. Sometimes, after the show, just to cool down, I'd walk into the audience and talk with them, and they’d say, ‘you gave a hell of a performance' and we don’t know what our performance is. We just play.”

B: “This is something I’m thinking about right now, but I guess I’m conscious we exaggerate a bit of what we do. When you play in a small club, you do what you do, which I guess it’s enough, you being you, The Sugarcubes just keeping up the pressure.”

S: “To sum it up, I think that whether we play in small clubs or big stadiums, we give all we’ve got to what we’re doing, so it’s very intense for us as a group. So I don’t think that ever differs. We’re not absent-minded.”

What did you fear would happen to you most on the tour?

E: “Johnny Lydon and Bernard Albrecht singing backing vocals for us.”

Br: "Everything sequenced, music on tape. Ending up playing music on stage from tapes, like some bands do."

Br: "Not to mention any names."

E: "Boney M. They are great favourites of ours."

A Little Indian suggested I ask you about the connection between The Sugarcubes and Boney M.

E: “There's none, except Boney M were great.”

B: "When Boney M started, they wanted to be a futuristic, or modern, pop band, and that's a bad thing to want to be now.”

Br: "Bjork said Boney M wanted to be futuristic, but they accidentally got to be, especially when you get to look at them today. I remember when the first Boney M album came out, it was a revelation as such, a new disco beat, nothing futuristic about it.”

S: “I remember when it was pure pop tack, and I thought they were very good as such, but I hated them then. But that was a different scene."

Does the term ‘pure pop tack' sum you up?

B: “I would love to be a pure pop tack band. It’s my target in a way. To be a simple, classic, pop tacky band."

Why tacky?

B: "Because it’s exciting.”

E: “But how can you be tacky?"

Br: "It's like fish and chips. Simple, effective..."

B: “To be normal...does that sound interesting? It’s a challenge."

E: "Because how can you be tacky? Tell me. It's very difficult."

B: “It’s easy trying to be mystic, or intelligent, but being tacky, that's tough."

Surely people can only be tacky by accident.

B: “You’re right there. That’s the difficulty. You can try and be an intelligent pop band and you can get a target and work hard, and you will get there, but wanting to become tacky is almost impossible."

S: “Because you don’t turn yourself tacky, history always turns something tacky.!"

E: “Like wearing white clothes is very tacky for me, and I feel really bad about it, but it is tacky.”

B: “I'm wearing a T-shirt I think for the first time in my life, it's because it’s a very special T-shirt, but T-shirts have always...T-shirts, jeans and sneakers have always been the most tackiest thing...I puke."

Hey, look what I’m wearing (but no sneakers, just Doc Martens Greasers...

B: “You’ve got your taste, I’ve got mine, I respect yours. I must tell you one thing. I've also got sneakers."

I thought the album has a noticeable dance-pop feel.

B: "We didn’t plan it but I’m quite happy to hear it because I want The Sugarcubes to be a proper pop group. But first of all, we have to write proper pop songs. We are a very good pop group but we have to get better.”

Br: "Actually, I would like to see a person dancing to it.”

It’s not soulful dancing, not sexy...

S: “It's not sensual."

Which mirrors your more European, white culture.

E: “Cold and frigid...”

S: "Call me a pervert but I actually find some of the rhythms quite sensual. I conceived them. Even the slower rhythms.”

“Birthday” was sensual.

B: "For me, ’Water' is quite sensual. It's one of the slow songs.

What music do you feel is sensual?

Br: "The beat doesn’t need to be sensual. It’s the atmosphere that makes it sensual."

B: "I can't think of anyone. As soon as I think of one artist, I think of another one. Any artist could be sensual. People have different sensual rhythms.”

Do you see your own music as being sexy?

B: “It became very tiring when, just after the last album, when people only knew 'Birthday', and talked about being sexy and sex in general. It was so stupid to pick that out and isolate that subject. I wasn’t denying that Sugarcubes music can be sexy but it’s all other things as well - it's stupid, it’s witty, it’s lazy, it’s active, aggressive. That’s what we want - sexy to hopefully be one of 10,000 things.”

S: "We don't write songs with any special intention. Our songs just happen, and what they sound like relates to what the feeling is when we’re writing. They can have a multitude of emotions."

Who is Regina?

Br: "She’s a housewife who contributes to an evening newspaper in Iceland."

B: “She’s a local journalist for a national daily evening paper. She writes little bits, small articles that are very local.”

S: “Like what her friend next door is doing, or some great relative of her friend next door did something special.”

B: 'Jimmy Brown had a brilliant carrot harvest last week. I actually tasted them and then went to his place’."

S: “There was one very interesting story from her - beer was legalised in Iceland on March 1st this year, and she was describing the people who went to the state liquor store to buy beer and she opened the article by saying, 'I even saw children carrying cases of beer bottles into the parents’ cars. That’s the way she writes. It’s very conservative.”

B: "She’s very personal about things."

In “Regina”, you mention “lobsters” and “chastity belts”.

S: “Lobsters and fame.”

B: “It’s actually quite difficult because usually Einar and I write our own stuff, but “Regina" was written by our guitarist Thor, who’s not here."

E: “He actually took 'lobsters and fame' from an Icelandic translation of an Abba book. In one chapter, they say, ‘we're only in it for the caviar and fame’. It’s a really bizarre sentence. We really don’t understand the meaning of it."

S: “Lobsters and fame. That should be the end. Chastity belt has to do with...”

E: “Hmmmmm....”

S: “I don’t think we should discuss the lyric."

B: "It's basically about us worshipping a lady that comes from the East of Iceland that has to crash down in the south. Like the sun. So we compare this lady Regina to the sun. She's just as brilliant as the sun. That’s all you need. A worshipping lyric.”

Is “Bee” a worshipping lyric too?

B: “The lyric was originally supposed to be a party game. One person was ’it’, and then that person would get wings and then a sting, and a costume, and try and sting somebody, and then he or she would become the bee. But I guess it turned into something else when it was written down but its still about that.”

Has the album got any connecting theme?

E: "The Sugarcubes, that's the theme. Whereas the last album was basically not...us...really in many ways, because we were a young band then, but we've lived together more now. The oldest song on the album was conceived in the first year, which is ‘Shoot It’. But that’s the exception. The rest was composed and recorded within a year.”

But the band haven't changed.

B: “No, but we’ve added a member, a keyboard player. It makes a difference, having six stubborn assholes instead of five stubborn assholes. It makes the whole proportion different.”

Three against three instead of a definite decision?

E: “More like six against 12. There are different mentalities taken on board.”

Do you like so much attention? Can it help you to be tacky?

E: “We aren’t so much in the press, but we have made ourselves available to the press. There's very few times that we’ve denied an interview, except when we've turned down a photo session when they’ve asked us to wear designer clothes. It seems to have confused the issue.”

B: “We still haven’t done National Enquirer."

But wouldn't it be tacky to pose in designer clothes?

E: “Because that would be the tackiest thing to do. And we don’t understand that. That’s an obvious way to get tacky.”

B: “We don’t do everything, we’re very choosy."

S: “Once we were offered to dress up in ski clothes for Rolling Stone, but it’s just not our style."

B: "If you take Boney M as an example, they didn’t do anything. They were one of the most stylish bands I’d seen. They were very choosy and did very few things.”

E: “They set a precedent for being tacky." 

B: “I guess we like Boney M because you want to dance to it and sing along when you hear it, but you have no sensible reason to do it."

E: '“Ra-Ra-Ra-Rasputin, Russia’s greatest love machine, it was a shame how he carried on...’ Our tackiness is not obvious."

B: “I think we’re exaggerating the tackiness now. It’s not the main thing about us, not at all.”

S: “It’s strange, that land of our sense of humour."

Does the money matter?

E: “Sure. This is our job, we know it. We might spend another one or two years, make possibly another brilliant album, but we want to be rich. This is no life.”

This will fund the future.

S: “Yes. Our life is in Iceland. This is work.” 

You still all want to live in iceland?

E: “As long as it is made passible for us to be there."

B: "Even when we spend 50% of our times in Iceland, last time I was there I felt like a visitor, which felt like a very strange thing.” 

Br: “You see in the newspapers that money brings unhappiness so it will be fascinating to experience unhappines with money. We like to suffer."

E: "I want money, make no mistake about it."

S: "I’m building an empire - world domination or death."

E: "We are. That's my view of the situation - work hard for a few years and build an empire."

E: "And then we can do what we want.”

Why is Iceland more appealing to live in than elsewhere?

E: “Because we’re from there. I think we’ve seen enough - I've already lived four years abroad. Siggi lived three years abroad. It’s our natural habitat.”

B: "London is a brilliant city but it’s not a city to live in, just to visit, like New York. Iceland is the best place, not just because it’s our home, but you can't understand the sort of luxury it is, just to be able to go to other places and just visit.”

E: "If we become filthy stinking rich, we might be forced to move out. I am prepared to accept to move out.”

Br: “It's just the fact that we were born there."

E: "I’ve never met an Icelander who doesn’t have a really strong lifeline for his country, or an Icelander who you meet abroad who doesn’t say, ‘I think I’m moving back’. A girl I met last night who’s been living here in New York several years is moving back. New York is not a more important city than Reykavik. Not mentally."

B: "It's also we’ve been doing things separately or together for the last eight years. I'm talking about the year when Thor put out his first poetry book or Braggi did his first concert. We’ve just been basically active in Iceland for eight years, and most people knew who we were and we just fought through the whole period. The treatment we've got has been very special. It's never been difficult for US to do this, and I guess we're just getting.,, addicted to that way. We come here and everyone goes, ’ohh, ohhhhh, I love your music, jeez, I love this bag, what do you wanna do, do you wanna sell this?’, while in Iceland they goes, 'huh, who do think you are? An artist?"

E: “We’re going to bring nappies for tbe next tour of America, so that we can give them out before people meet us and pee and shit themselves from excitement. ‘Now you're going to meet The Sugarcubes, could you please put your nappy on?’"

You’ve also re-recorded “Cold Sweat” as a C&W song, but is it really C&W? It's sounds like the ‘Cubes parodying C&W.

S: “It’s C&W for us.”

B: “But the mixture of two things makes the third thing. A mixture of C&W and Sugarcubes isn't then Country and Western.”

S: "It’s the same principle - our music is our version of pop music, at a given time, so we call this Country & Western."

E: "This is possibly how a country band would do a C&W cover of one of our songs. That’s what we think. You’re the journalist - you’ve got the privilege of knowing the nickname of the song - Cold Sweat, but on the album, the song’s going to be called 'Hot Meat’.”

E: "That was it's original title. We said to Bjork, why can’t you fucking write a proper pop love song lyric.”

B: "I did my best.”

Br: "'Hot Meat' was the most gross title ever - you can see this big chunk of meat that’s hot..."

B: "That’s meat - that's somebody in love. Why not?

E: "I think we started calling the song ’Cold Sweat’ because a cold sweat is something that happens to you, and that was the working title and it got stuck.”

B: "I still think ’Hot Meat' is a better name for the song. I*m totally happy with the Cold Sweat’ tackiness."

How has American radio taken to you?

E: "You can ask a guy on the other side of this wall. He does our college radio. Some commercial radio stations have played us.” Commercial radio across America is the aim though, isn't it?

E: "I appear on Channel 23, saying 'Sugarcubes suck'."

Are you nice to interviewers on the radio?

B: "We're always nice."

S: "Except when we get nasty, but that’s another story.”

Br: “Do you find us offensive?"

E: "Bjork can tell you a story about WDRE."

B: "I was just trying to be honest and sincere. This woman, Malibu Sue, she got to know that many members of the band are pregnant and most of the people working around the band are pregnant, or just had a baby, maybe eight or nine people. So she was asking about that, and she had the song 'Mama' ready to play, and I was just telling her about how brilliant the feeling it was being pregnant, and lolloping women with big stomachs, just eating and having fun and just about exploding, with life, and she asked me if I had any message for the people out there, and I said, ‘of course, get pregnant now. Dial 1-800...’ They laughed."

E: "But they faded you out."

They treat you differently because they must think Icelanders are a different species.

B: “This Iceland problem was basically last year's but we've got over that."

E: "They try to attribute that we look or behave differently on the account of drugs. But we don’t need drugs. It’s not a contributing factor to our silliness."

B: I was told when I was 13, 'Bjork, you’re so drunk, you don't have to drink."

But you’re eccentric compared to other people.

E: "No, other people are eccentric."

True, after five days in Hew York, I can’t help thinking you're less eccentric than most of the inhabitants.

E: "That’s why I don’t go out. I stay in my hotel room. Bjork goes out but I'm really scared of going out. It can freak me out."

B: “The minute I got here, I just fell in love with the city. I just love walking around here."

Dressed in gold lame jacket, orange ski pants and brothel creepers?

E: “Bjork is more interested in New York than the city is in her. People shy away from her.”

B: “They dress very beautifully here. The clothes are very interesting.”

(enter stage left) Press officer: “Anybody hungry for pizza?”

S: “I already ordered a cheese sandwich.”

Br: “A toasted cheese sandwich.”

Press Officer: “Is that grilled?"

B: “Is it possible to get a samosa? I had it last time.”

Press officer: “What’s a samosa?” (exit stage left)

S: “It’s a constant source of amusement, going to the movies with Bjork, and she’s very often perceived as a wierd 14 year old boy or younger."

I’m not sure why you stay in your room, Einar.

E: “Basically, I don’t like people. I like my friends, and I mix with them, but we’re doing a job now and communicating to other people with our songs, so I find it very hard to go out of my room on my day off. I don’t want to see anybody, I just want to watch television and the news. You see much more interesting things on the television than the streets.”

(sandwich enters stage left. Siggi opens the tin foil and gasps. We start counting - no less than 16 layers of cheese and three more of tomato.)

B: “This proves that at least one thing we said in this interview was the truth, the whole truth."

S: “Americans always have to exaggerate...no, lie. This is a lie. I wouldn’t call that a cheese sandwich. It’s a cheese monster. Can you arrange a stretcher for me at six o’clock?”

Why do you go out, Bjork?

B: "I just love going to new places.”

Will your lyrics be influenced by all the travelling, the new cities, all the inner-city crumbling and poverty...

B: “We don’t write about facts, do we? More things we think about, so of course, it affects us. Everything does, but I won’t go writing, ‘I get such big portions of food in America’...”

E: “I went walking down Bow-er-reee’...”

S: “’J saw a man from South Africa’...”

B: "’A Chinese woman and a negro holding. ..ha-ands...’”

Do you ever feel the need to show a social conscience - that Life’s Not Always Good?

E: “Our songs are the social conscience. They are what that is today, and if you start thinking, then personally, the way we feel, you don’t need politics or social conscience.” 

S: "'Life's Too Good' is one of the biggest social consciousness statements I've heard in a long while."

E: “We don’t need to go out protesting because then we would fall into a trap of trying to be political, and politics do no good to this world.”

B: "I think individualism is the main thing, and I think I can do much more in changing the world, by saving the planet and all that shit, by not using the same usual jargon about saving the world. Not using very much paper and throwing it away, all that stuff...it should be a very personal thing. The minute I stand back and tell somebody else what to do, that’s not individualism, that's something else. If you would say this planet is not being cared for, then you can say that people are not taking care of individuality. They’re driving over things and fucking things up. It’s exactly the same thing, standing up and telling people what to do. Even things like stop cutting the rainforest.”

E: “We might be the most political group in rock music today."

S: “The world is always getting better. If the past is fascinating, it was always worse. It’s getting better, even if we have bigger problems.”

B: "I just think New York is such a brilliant place, and it made me realise that people think cities are something that's wrong, and plastic is something that’s wrong, and tin foil - that it's not natural. It’s bullshit because everything that is on the earth came from earth, and earth is natural, and how can anything on earth be unnatural? It’s just stupid." 

E: "At the same time, that doesn't make The Sugarcubes right. We might be wrong."

Is there a band motto?

E: “I was talking about that. We should go up to the twenty-sixth floor and have a meeting. OK, it's 'we might be wrong’.”

MARTIN ASTON