Sugarcubes Stir Up Zesty Brew Seasoned With Iceland Mystery

You’ve got to be ready for anything when the Sugarcubes hit the stage. That’s a rare and welcome trait in a rock band when most groups are numbingly predictable.

In its first Southern California performance Thursday night at the Bacchanal club, the acclaimed Icelandic group spent as much time singing brand new songs as the familiar ones on its recently released debut album, “Life’s Too Grand.”

The band--which will be in Los Angeles at the Scream tonight and at the Roxy on Monday and Tuesday--also delights in reworking the lyrics and arrangements of the songs on the album.

In addition, lead singers Bjork (who tends to go by just her first name because, no doubt, Gudmundsdottir is hard to fit on a marquee) and Einar (likewise, with the last name Beneditksson) are not beyond slipping into their native Icelandic rather than sticking to the English of the LP.

Some mainstream rock fans might throw up their hands at such anarchy, but the capacity crowd at the 500-seat Bacchanal was wildly enthusiastic--and justifiably so.

While many in the audience seemed at first to be caught up in the novelty of seeing a band from Iceland, it became clear early in the group’s 70-minute set that the Sugarcubes are far more than some passing pop curio.

In their best moments, the six musicians demonstrated the independence and torrid energy of some of X’s early shows around Los Angeles--a comparison accented by furious vocal exchanges by Bjork (pronounced Be- urk ) and Einar that were reminiscent of X’s John Doe and Exene Cervenka.

That’s high praise for a new band, but the Sugarcubes--as its excellent album indicated--is a wonderfully exciting and invigorating new attraction.

Bjork energizes her singing with yelps and shrieks that have the primal edge of a woman in childbirth, and the band plays in a tough, galvanizing post-punk style that is short of X’s locomotive roar, but more tenacious than, say, the Pretenders’ approach.

The group’s original vision is rooted in classic pop values (the bands that Einar admires range from pop hooksmiths ABBA to the radical Swans), but it is filtered through a somewhat mystical Icelandic perspective.

The Cubes’ best lyrics are lined with mysterious edges that force you to keep re-examining your initial interpretation. Why in “Motorcrash” does that little girl always seem to turn up at the scene of an accident? And exactly what in “Birthday” is that man doing with the little girl?

Frequently in rock, this type of clever gamesmanship leads to a certain somberness and pretense on stage--as if the bands want to make sure the audience realizes that it’s in the presence of real artists.

But there was nothing stuffy or remote in the Sugarcubes’ manner at the Bacchanal. In fact, many of those drawn by the intelligence and craft shown on the album were no doubt surprised by the lighthearted moments in the show.

The band returned for the encore wearing fluorescent glasses that glowed in the semi-darkness, and they wove their way around the stage during some tunes with the goofy, mechanical steps of wind-up dolls.

At the heart of the show’s disarming and unpredictable nature was the sense of musicians who truly delight in making music.

In an interview before the show, Bjork--a young woman with unusually expressive, almond-shaped eyes--said the band’s philosophy has been shaped by the history of the rock scene in Iceland, a country of about 250,000 that is 570 miles west of Norway.

“Iceland, perhaps because it is so isolated, the whole nation tends to get involved in crazes, and the craze in the ‘70s was discos,” said Bjork, 22.

“It was very hard to find a live band, so--as always happens when one craze ends--there was this explosion of bands around 1980 or 1981. Maybe 15 to 20 bands, which was huge for a city like Reykjavik (population: 90,000). We all just loved the idea of being in a band.

“Our goal wasn’t--and still isn’t --to be (superstars) around the world. The goal of the band is to make music we enjoy. That’s the Sugarcubes’ No. 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 goal.”

Einar, 25, said he and Bjork, who write most of the lyrics, don’t translate the songs into English until they are ready to record them, which is often several weeks after they introduce the song in the live show. That’s why they sing some of the new songs in Icelandic on this tour.

This independence is more than simply a refreshing innocence honed in Iceland, far from the glare of corporate rock consciousness. It is in keeping with the celebrated ideal of spontaneity in rock--an ideal that few bands even pay lip service to anymore.

The question facing the Sugarcubes as they move into the often suffocating world rock market is whether these six musicians can maintain that independence. The answer to that question may be as intriguing as any of the mysteries in the band’s songs.

LIVE ACTION: Sade will be at the Greek Theatre Oct. 17-19. Tickets go on sale Sunday. . . . Also available Sunday are tickets for these shows: Cheap Trick Sept. 16 at Universal Amphitheatre, and Santana, Stevie Ray Vaughan and the Fabulous Thunderbirds Oct. 2 at Pacific Amphitheatre. . . . Tickets go on sale Monday for a fourth Kenny Loggins Pacific Amphitheatre show on Oct. 3, and for Little Feat’s Sept. 23-24 Pantages Theatre dates.