-- Taken from the Toronto Star, 1992 --

Warning! The surgeon-general has determined prolonged speculation on The Sugarcubes to be dangerous to your mental health.

There are, in fact, only three things about them a sane mind can safely process: They hail from Iceland, they play a surrealist version of pop music, their career seems to revolve around being a live-action Magic Roundabout cartoon as scripted by Salvador Dali.  Any further thinking on them invites confusion, angst and a generally skewed sense of relality, so caveat lector...

Acid Test though, are just as brain-friendly as their handle suggests, and spent their entire opening set on Monday trying to get the endorphins pumping and the Concert Hall going amiably mental.

But apart from a lot of (much deserved) whistling, most of the audience did their near flawless imitations of lobotomy patients, which is pretty much beyond belief: AT's mad-lab concoction of 70's disco, rave and Hendrix axe mania was tight, beat- perfect infections.  "Mr. Skin" was especially shakin' and impossibly cool to boot, DJ Jus'rite triggering samples of the Devil and glowering behind his cig like he could snap backbones with a single twist of his turntable.

Einar Sugarcube couldn't wait to toss in a little threat of his own: he'd just barely parked his big jacket and brushcut on stage when he seized the mike and yelled, Icelandic accent crackling, "I am known for my violent behaviour!".

Einar, be warned, is not the Sugarcubes' singer. That's Bjork, she of the ethreal voice that can wring a surprising amount of passion out of weirdities like "Coldsweat" and "Delicious Demon".

No, Einar is, well, Einar.  He's that element of kookiness that keeps the Sugarcubes entertaining and with a reassuringly loose grip on reality.  He's the flipside of Bjork's shy artiste: just after she's added some heartbreaking pixie vocals, Einar pops up like a troll from under a bridge, brandishing his bugle, gibbering, scaring the children.

Of course, the Sugarcubes are a band - and as this show proved, one as skilled as any "normal" band you'd care to dredge up - but without Einar they'd be just that.  "Hit" would still be a naggingly catchy tune, but it's Einar's loopy monologues and cartoony-voiced stab at "Bohemian Rhapsody" (honest!) that nudge the Cubes to a greater calling.

Live, they're a dare to junk your notions of "a good show" and gloriously regress to a time that predates cool professionalism, where the only thing that matters is acting like a right nutter and having a great time cheesing off the Serious Artistes in the process.

They might seem utterly mad - chewing on their mikes, emitting blood-mouldering shrieks and the drop of a herring, doing another a capella Queen cover - but there's an ingenious method to them.