Album: Copper Blue
Year: 1992
. . .
Of course, it wasn’t just Nirvana (and My Bloody Valentine) what got Bob Mould interested in returning to his strengths, it was also bands like the Pixies — who famously found Kim Deal by advertising for a bassist who loved Hüsker Dü & Peter, Paul & Mary (and now I wish the Hüskers had covered “Leaving on a Jet Plane” in the same supersonic way they covered “Eight Miles High“) — whose eternal “Debaser” provided inspiration to Copper Blue’s dark second song, the murder ballad “A Good Idea.”
Opening with David Barbe’s burbling bass and Malcolm Travis’s kickdrums over a moaning haunted house guitar, Mould opens with a quietly unhinged vocal.
They went down to the river
On a warm summer night
The air was thick with the smell of temptation
The way Mould sings “temp-TAYSHUN” is one of my favorite moments in all of his music, chillingly anticipating what’s coming next without giving anything away. At the same time he adds a zigzagging guitar lead for good measure whilst continuing setting up the story.
He said why don’t we lay in the water
Let the water run over me
And she grinned and she said
Now she said now she said
And now everything is going full-bore, as Mould continues into the chorus:
Now that’s a good idea
She said she said
Now that’s a good idea
She said she said
Now that’s a good idea
She said she said
Now that’s a good idea
She said she said
And so as we go on, he’s drowning her and she’s resisting and not resisting, while admitting “I’ve been waiting for years / And I’d rather be dead,” to which he replies “that’s a good idea” which sets up the chilling bridge, which stops and starts and stops and starts.
He held her down in the river
He held her down in the water
Another river of mud
Wash away those tears
And then, after Mould chants “He said now that’s a good idea” a few times — his guitar starts pingponging every which way — he suddenly implicates himself, and by extension, us.
I saw them from the ocean
She didn’t seem to mind
Didn’t fight it at all
She didn’t fight it at all
Some things are best left alone
Sometimes I’m best left alone
And sometimes I see you in the water
At night at night at night at night
After that, it’s all shit-hot guitar, drum rolls, and Bob Mould trying to convince us that a murder by drowning, witnessing said murder, and singing about it is a good idea. But I’m not even sure he convinces himself, much less us. Either way, “A Good Idea” is a platonic ideal of my Second Song Theory: the second song on any great recording needs to be equal if not better than the first, because that lets the listener know that a) the first song wasn’t a fluke, and b) there’s still a shitton of great stuff to come.
“A Good Idea” was released as the third single from Copper Blue and while it didn’t make any American charts — too noisy and dark — it was the first Sugar single to chart in the U.K., albeit at #65.
“A Good Idea”
“A Good Idea” by the Bob Mould Band Live on KEXP, 2013
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