I've been listening and watching a lot of classic Björk and the Sugarcubes lately.

I first heard Björk's voice while working in a CD store in the late 1980s. My first reaction was "who the fuck  is that screaming like a banshee?" Pretty much the same reaction as everyone in the store. I was a fan of the Boston scene back then (Throwing Muses, the Pixies, Mission of Burma etc) and considered those bands college radio, alternative but poppy sounding and not indie. The Sugarcubes were pop music on an entirely different level. Kristin & Tanya of Throwing Muses masked their lack of conventional singing voices with a quirky sense of melody and harmonizing. Björk I could tell was a classically trained voice but also so much, much more. One of the clichés you hear from musicians is the concept of "music was flowing out of them." If you were to apply that Bjork, a more accurate description would be her voice was  like a primordial force of nature escaping her mouth at maximum velocity. Simultaneously ferocious, yet tender. Brutally violent and ethereal. A shipload of familiar contradictions that still can't adequately sum up her sound.

"Birthday" began my complete fascination with her / their sound. A haunting, lilting melody with Bjork's voice & lyrics floating above it, building her own crescendos and valleys but never sounding out of place.  She was obviously singing about love & sex - more obviously on other tracks from Life is good (Delicious demon, Motorcrash) but still evident here. Was birthday an inappropriate love song between a 5-yr old girl and a creepy old man? Maybe. There's a very rich literary tradition from the Romantic era built on pre-sexual desire and the girl-child as an object of obsession. If I had the space to get into it here, I would, complete with images of pixies & birds taking flight (Victorian symbols of sex). Suffice it to say the Sugarcubes dealt with sex in a very upfront way, perhaps confrontational or casual depending on the listener. That was another difference you didn't get with alternative american music at the time. Sure the Pixies & Muses sang about sex but it was often guilt-ridden lyrics filled with self-loathing and/or torture. The Sugarcubes were much too positive & happy to leave it like that.

Fast forward some 25 years and they still sound as refreshing and galvanizing as they did back then. Björk's voice still has the same visceral impact  on my ears today. I'll readily admit I'm not as big a fan of her later solo work which continues to innovate and utilize technology in ways beyond pop music fare. Maybe it's because the later work doesn't quite have the impact of the holy trinity of Björk songs in my mind; Hyperballad, Isobel & Joga. In retrospect (and with the current retrospective at MoMa in mind, which I haven't seen yet) I can't help but wonder how lucky we all were to have heard her music and seen her perform in our lifetimes.  No exhibit can adequately sum up her unique impact on music and visual art for my generation. That's a bold statement but for the benefit of millenials, what current artist even comes close? Will there be a MoMa exhibit to honor Beyonce in 25 years? I hope not but i guess time will tell. Until then ,  I have the memories and the songs & videos that are testament to the moment Björk's primal voice first enthralled a teenage kid in a CD store plus millions more.

Sugarcubes Live - "Birthday"