2000 Great Songs #1303: Regina
The Sugarcubes' 1988 debut, Life's Too Good , was pretty astounding at the time, a strange little band out of Iceland of all places, though these days it seems to be largely forgotten aside from an early footnote in launching Bjork's career. This historical neglect may be because the band's remaining two albums weren't terribly memorable, despite some decent enough tracks on each. Still, I still have some fondness for "Regina," off 1989's Here Today, Tomorrow Next Week . I can't quite call it great--like a lot of their work, it's dragged down by the other "vocalist" (using that term loosely), whose barking was incredibly grating. Nonetheless, Bjork's singing in the chorus is downright supernatural, more than compensating for that annoying dude, and it's worth plodding through his bits song just to get to those parts. Plus, hard to knock the musicianship of the band, probably one of the reasons I like them but had zero interes...
