Sugar

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!

Certain Songs #2551: Sugar – “Feeling Better”

February 9, 2023 by Jim Connelly

Album: Beaster EP
Year: 1993

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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.

Certain Songs #2550: Sugar – “JC Auto”

February 8, 2023 by Jim Connelly

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.

Certain Songs #2549: Sugar – “Try Again”

February 7, 2023 by Jim Connelly

Album: Besides
Year: 1992

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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.

Certain Songs #2548: Sugar – “Needle Hits E”

February 6, 2023 by Jim Connelly

Album: Besides
Year: 1992

. . .

Bob Mould wrote a shitton of songs for the Copper Blue sessions. And while Sugar recorded nearly a couple of dozen of them, because Mould was committed to the idea that an album — even in the CD era — be a somewhat succinct statement, less than half of those songs actually made it to Copper Blue. Some of them made ended up on Beaster — stay tuned! — but others ended up as b-sides, of which all of Sugar’s singles had at least three. Because Mould was also committed to the idea that singles have non-album b-sides. Great non-album b-sides, like “Love is All Around,” “All Work and No Play,” “All Those People Know” and “Needle Hits E.”

Certain Songs #2547: Sugar – “Man on the Moon”

February 5, 2023 by Jim Connelly

Album: Copper Blue
Year: 1992

. . .

It’s one of the weird quirks of 1992 that the two best albums of the year both had a song called “Man on The Moon,” but outside of the titles, the two songs really have nothing in common.

We’ve already talked about R.E.M.’s “Man on the Moon,” the low-key samba that uses Andy Kaufman and Mott The Hoople to question the nature of reality itself.

Certain Songs #2546: Sugar – “If I Can’t Change Your Mind”

February 4, 2023 by Jim Connelly

Album: Copper Blue
Year: 1992

. . .

After the four near-perfect pop-punk songs that opened it, Copper Blue took a bit of a turn by finishing what was clearly the first side — in 1992, I was still mentally dividing my CDs into “side one” and “side two” — the the grand Beatles pastiche “Hoover Dam,” followed by the harrowing “The Slim,” all about losing a lover to AIDS.

Certain Songs #2545: Sugar – “Helpless”

February 3, 2023 by Jim Connelly

Album: Copper Blue
Year: 1992

. . .

Kicking off with a super tight Malcolm Travis snare roll, “Helpless” is the probably the poppiest song on Copper Blue, a veritable ear candy hookfest that is impossible to get out of your head.

And why would you want to? Anchored by an incredibly short and simple guitar hook, “Helpless” lets Mould’s infinite guitar sustain carry it through the chorus, which opens the song, always a great trick.

Certain Songs #2544: Sugar – “Changes”

February 2, 2023 by Jim Connelly

Album: Copper Blue
Year: 1992

. . .

One of the secrets to the eternal greatness of Copper Blue is the sequencing, especially the first four songs on side one, which almost play like a mini-suite: the way the songs set each other up is fabulous. “A Good Idea’s” debasser line coming out of the end of “The Act We Act” is one thing, but the way the ringing guitars of “Changes” float out of the end of “A Good Idea” is almost beyond human ken. Which might be one of the reasons that “Changes” isn’t just my favorite song on Copper Blue, it’s up there with my favorite Bob Mould songs of all time, like “Celebrated Summer,” “Makes No Sense At All” and “Ice Cold Ice.”