It's New To Me: Here Today, Tomorrow Next Week! by the Sugarcubes (1989)

Illustration from Animal Castration: a Book for the Use of Students and Practitioners by George Ransom White, 1914

First, something I've wanted to note: The illustrations posted each day are not meant to be related in any way to the content of the day's post. Please don't try to read too much into them. I am saying this today because I don't want to be hunted down and killed (or castrated) by crazed Björk fans.

Speaking of Björk, I have issues with the success she's had. Not that I don't like her songs - it's just that her solo success seems to have erased the existence of the Sugarcubes from the public consciousness, and it's too bad. The Sugarcubes' 1988 debut Life's Too Good was considered an amazing work of out-of-left-field creativity and was a surprise hit in the UK. Iceland had it's own B-52's all of a sudden - a band that wanted to make you dance but had way too many weird ideas to make typical dance music. The two albums that followed received less attention and, by 1993, Björk had moved on to working as a solo artist.

I recently found a box set of all three Sugarcubes albums for under ten bucks, so I decided to give them a try. To my surprise, the album that really stands out to me is the second album Here Today, Tomorrow Next Week!, considered by critics to be the band's weakest. The entire review of the album on allmusic.com is this: "A slip from the first album, but not so much that it's without merit." There's a lot more to say about this album than that.

One of the big issues people had with Here Today when it came out was that it included more vocal contributions from the band's shouty hype-man Einar. The general consensus was, "Shut up and let Björk sing!" But listening to all three albums together, Here Today stands out as their most ambitious work. It's all over the map stylistically, and Björk sounds amazing (when Einar shuts up and lets her sing). Sometimes they sound like a dancier Pixies with buzzing guitars, at other times they sound like a less dancey (but also less annoying) Happy Mondays.

I have a lot of love for this album, particularly some of the less conspicuous songs like "Bee". The intro and chorus arrangement sound like 10,000 Maniacs, not a comparison you can make with most Sugarcubes songs. In this context, Björk sounds like a really unhinged Natalie Merchant, singing lyrics that are baffling even by Sugarcubes standards. Einar's first vocal interjection is this: "I play a frightened little game / I eject myself at scary speed / In front of cars and i go blaagh!" What's not to love?

"Bee" by the Sugarcubes