SUGARCUBES : Icelandic Band Rescues the Action Life

Remember when the Sugarcubes led pop’s Icelandic Invasion a few years ago?

OK, so most pop fans still can’t spell Reykjavik . But the success of the Sugarcubes’ 1988 debut, “Life’s Too Good,” did bring a glimmer of recognition to the frozen island nation. And it also helped open the commercial door for alternative rock in the United States and other countries.

That’s plenty of global focus for the band. Though the group has just released a pop-toned new album, “Stick Around for Joy,” it is abdicating its ad-hoc role as Iceland’s art ambassadors.

“It was not our idea of spending our lives,” says singer Bjork Gudmundsdottir of the band’s time as an international pop sensation.

Gudmundsdottir, 26, explains that the Sugarcubes were never meant to be the top priority for the band members. It was merely one facet of an artists coalition called Bad Taste that formed in Reykjavik, Iceland’s capital, in the mid-’80s.

“To our point of view--and here comes a very egotistic statement--we were rescuing the Reykjavik action life,” she says in slightly broken English as she sat in Elektra Records’ Beverly Hills headquarters. “We would help people open clubs, put out records, make films. . . . We were just trying to escape boredom.”

And today, even three albums into an acclaimed career, the pop band’s activities are secondary.

“We are more Bad Taste than Sugarcubes,” she says. Accordingly, the band took care of promotion in one flurry and live performances will be just as limited--only seven U.S. concert dates this year, including a Los Angeles show April 24 at the Wiltern Theatre.

The irony is that the success of the Sugarcubes’ restlessness-inspired rock endeavors has taken away the band’s need to be restless, and even made it ready to tout Iceland’s virtues.

“We were really suffering (in Iceland) when we started,” Gudmundsdottir said. “Now we love it.”