Life’s Too Good by The Sugarcubes

Life's Too Good, the Sugarcubes' debut album, landed on One Little Indian in the UK and Europe on 25 April 1988, with Elektra bringing it to America the following month, and nobody saw what came next. The Icelandic band were veterans of Reykjavík's early '80s rock underground, and they built the record on that scene's post-punk bones, aiming for a joke at the expense of pop's relentless optimism, hence the title.

The joke turned out to have hooks. Björk sings and plays keyboards, and her voice is the wild card: it yelps, coos, gurgles and soars, often in the same line, while Einar Örn Benediktsson answers with trumpet and sardonic backing vocals. Þór Eldon and Friðrik Erlingsson rattle out spiky guitar, Bragi Ólafsson's bass bounces, Sigtryggur Baldursson drums with a lopsided kick, and Einar Melax adds keyboards, all under Ray Shulman's production. "Birthday" floats and shivers like nothing else on the radio, while "Motorcrash", "Coldsweat", "Deus" and "Delicious Demon" lurch, clatter and cackle.

It became an unexpected success and put the band on the international map, with Björk drawing most of the spotlight years before she went solo in 1993. The band had never meant to be taken seriously, but a hit debut and a record contract kept them going for two more studio albums.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.