The Sugarcubes: Live Zabor

The 60-minute The Sugarcubes: Live Zabor is a collection of live performances spanning several shows, one a performance in London at the Astoria in May 1988, a second from a show in Auburn, Alabama in October 1988, and two from Reykjavik and Akureyn in May 1989.  It covers songs from their first two albums leading up to 1989, Life’s Too Good, the band’s crowning achievement, and Here Today, Tomorrow Next Week!.  The shows give a good representation of their catalogue, with popular songs like “Birthday,” “Motorcrash” and “Cold Sweat,” and a sound which ranged from slow, prodding jams to uptempo punk.  The songs are interspersed with different interviews with each of the band members, some of which feature the band’s cheeky and inquisitive sensibilities such as Siggi clwning around as a minister offering up a history of Alabama, Bjork talking about the inner workings of TV sets, or Einar discussing planets and their similarities to man.  Many of the interviews essentially act as segues into the songs of the same name.  The shows, which range in size from small stages to somewhat modest theater stages, effectively manage to show the band’s very casual, intimate approach to playing live.

Video/Audio/Extras

The sound quality and picture quality here are very good.  The sound is in Dolby Digital, with a full-screen picture format.  The shows’ stages vary in size and lighting, but even the club footage is pretty clear.  Shot with what seems to be a multi-camera mixture of stationary and hand-held cameras, there is very crisp, up-close footage of the bandmembers’ performances in each.  The DVD doesn’t feature any extras, however.

Covering the material off of the band’s three studio album catalogue, Life’s Too Good, Here Today, Tomorrow Next Week! and Stick Around for Joy, Sugarcubes: The DVD is a collection of twelve of the bands music videos, with their popular hits and less-known album tracks songs represented.  The videos are very much a product of the 1980s style of videomaking, in which videos were more or less collages of images and themes as opposed to displays of hyper editing.  Some songs, like “Eat the Menu” and “Luftgitar” feature stage performances of songs by the band, and the band's interest in motifs of nature play a prominent part in songs like “Planet” and “Deus” and “Birthday,” all of which depict underwater and snowy mountain imagery.  Other videos adopt concepts, such as “Cold Sweat,” which features Bjork and the band rolling around in a pile of gold and jewels, and “Hit,” in which the band dresses as and plays with dolls.  It’s a very interesting look at a band that tried to play with its own identity and use aspects of visual art to accompany itself.

Video/Audio/Extras

The DVD is presented in Dolby Digital, with video in full-screen format.  The picture and sound are fairly good.  There are no real extras, although the disc counts the last three videos, all from the Stick Around for Joy album, “Hit,” Walkabout” and “Vitamin” as bonus materials. 

Final Words

As a live time capsule of The Sugarcubes, Live Zabor is a concise, well-shot, artfully put-together package that should please fans of the band or just people who are looking to discover what the band was all about, offering up a clear reflection of its raw sound and attitude onstage.  The video collection Sugarcubes: The DVD meanwhile is a nice collection of the band’s creative embrace of video techniques.  This is a strong pair of DVDs that captures one of the 80s seminal pop/punk bands.