We're Not Who You Think We Are
Album: Trophy
Year: 2017
. . .
Sunny Sweeney had been kicking around Nashville for over a decade before we discovered her fourth album, 2017’s Trophy. I don’t know how it came across my radar — 2017 being approximately 57 years ago or so — but I definitely liked her big full voice belting it out over loose, sparse arrangements.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2558: Sunny Sweeney – “Pills”
Album: Human Ceremony
Year: 2016
. . .
As y’all know by now, one of my favorite subcategories of Certain Songs is songs about Space. SPACE! And while those songs basically peaked around the time when we stopped going to the Moon, it doesn’t mean that I don’t love when youngish bands write songs in that tradition. Because I do!
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2557: Sunflower Bean – “Space Exploration Disaster”
Album: Suicidal Tendencies
Year: 1983
. . .
“KFSR!”
“Hi, can you play ‘Institutionalized’ by Suicidal Tendencies?”
“Um, I think I’ve heard it like three times already today.”
“Yeah, but none of those were my requests.”
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2556: Suicidal Tendencies – “Institutionalized”
Album: Life’s Too Good
Year: 1988
. . .
While “Birthday” seemed like it was created by aliens using AI, other songs on Life’s Too Good could be traced back to things that other humans previously created, like, for example, “Delicious Demon,” which somehow slapped early Gang of Four with early B-52’s and still came out with something completely new under the sun.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2555: The Sugarcubes – “Delicious Demon”
Album: Life’s Too Good
Year: 1988
. . .
35 years down the pike, it’s hard to express just how weird The Sugarcubes sounded when we first heard them in 1988. Back then, they sounded like aliens who had been what popular music sounded like without actually playing those aliens any popular music as a reference.
And given that they were from Iceland, that might have been the case, but my real guess was that being from Iceland meant that they really didn’t give a fuck about the rules, and so their debut, Life’s Too Good featured fractured fairy tales of songs like the utterly stunning “Birthday,” which announced to the world that lead singer Björk Guðmundsdóttir was a sui generis talent.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2554: The Sugarcubes – “Birthday”
Album: File Under Easy Listening
Year: 1994
. . .
My favorite song on File Under: Easy Listening was the final song on the album, and in fact, I’m sure one of the reasons I kept playing it was to get to that final track, the utterly sublime “Explode and Make Up,” which started off with a slow beat — a “Neil Young Beat” in my headcanon — with an acoustic guitar combined with an electric guitar. And Mould’s sad sad voice singing his sad sad words.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2553: Sugar – “Explode and Make Up”
Album: File Under: Easy Listening
Year: 1994
. . .
Unlike the recording of Copper Blue, the sessions for the official follow-up, 1994’s File Under: Easy Listening were fraught. Of course, this would been Spring 1994, when Sugar were actually massive stars in the U.K., their star was rising in the U.S., so there was some pressure on this album that Mould hadn’t really felt before. In addition, the suicide of Kurt Cobain weighed heavily on his mind, making him question pretty much everything. Oh, and he hated the songs they recorded so much in Atlanta that he scrapped the entire album. And erased the tapes!
AUUUUUGHHHH!
Album: Beaster EP
Year: 1993
. . .
With its opening guitar lead leaping out of the end of “JC Auto” like a balm or a salve, “Feeling Better” establishes its essential weirdness before Mould even opens his mouth, as that lead resolves into some power chords with a horn-like synthline sprinting through the music like it’s shocked to even be there, but also offering commentary in the opening verse.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2551: Sugar – “Feeling Better”
Album: Beaster
Year: 1993
. . .
As I mentioned before, Sugar recorded a shit-ton of songs during the Copper Blue, and while some of them — “Needle Hits E,” “Try Again,” “Clownmaster,” — ended up as b-sides (and eventually on Besides) — there was a whole batch that Bob Mould felt hung together as a follow-up.
And so, in April 1993 — Easter week — Sugar released what Mould called Copper Blue’s “evil twin,” the Beaster EP. Which, I should point out was only 14 minutes shorter than Copper Blue, but calling it an EP skirted the issue of it being the official follow-up to Copper Blue. Which 30 years later, is really a distinction without a difference, but at the time was important, because there was no way Beaster was going to sell as well as Copper Blue.
Album: Besides
Year: 1992
. . .
One of the other b-sides of the “Helpless” CD single — “b-side” of course being a misnomer since you didn’t really turn a CD single over like you did with a 45 — was the churning, building “Try Again,” which, unlike “Needle Hits E,” really wouldn’t have fit anywhere on Copper Blue.