Sugar
Copper Blue
In retrospect, we know the mechanics of grunge and we secretly hate them: the quiet-loud-quiet; the lethargic vocals; the swamp-water guitar. No matter how well a given band used the mechanics, there would always be someone lurking around the corner, waiting to do it better—to do it cooler. Subsequently, most rock from the early nineties sounds like dung today. Sugar never quite fit in to the grunge label that frequently tagged them; frontman Bob Mould carried a hardcore pedigree over from his prior band, Hüsker Dü and, frankly, he had done all the grunge shit eight years earlier. By the time Mould made Copper Blue, he knew how to use the mechanics in moderation—the album has a singular sound, but the songs don’t follow a particular pattern. There’s even a bit of prescience in Sugar nicking some of My Bloody Valentine’s guitar licks, years before that became commonplace, and punk rock’s tug against Mould’s poppier impulses still make for a shockingly exciting listen.
-Marty Brown, 2006
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