File Under Easy Listening

Certain Songs #2553: Sugar – “Explode and Make Up”

February 14, 2023 by Jim Connelly

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.

Certain Songs #2552: Sugar – “Gee Angel”

February 13, 2023 by Jim Connelly

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!

Sugar – File Under: Easy Listening

September 28, 1994 by Jim Connelly

(Ryko)

Bob Mould is god. Somebody’s bound to say it, and it might as well be me. At the very least, he’s one of my few rock and roll heroes who I can always count on. I mean, there are bands (R.E.M. & U2) who’ve provided more of my life’s soundtrack and songwriters (Paul Westerberg & Kurt Cobain) whose songs have hit me more viscerally. But for the past decade–since at least Husker Du’s Metal Circus, and maybe before– no one has been as consistently powerful and prolific. Or made a cooler noise on his guitar.