Sugar – Copper Blue (1992)

Sugar's debut album Copper Blue was elected as the album of the year in 1992 by NME and deservedly so, because this is a fantastic album filled with hit material. However, even though I'm quite a big fan of 90's alternative rock, I had never heard of the album until a few years ago when I was going through the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die. Apparently Sugar's fame was quite shortlived and not many people remember the band or the album a couple of decades later. I was personally too young to be looking at alternative charts when the album came out. I'm really happy to have discovered this album now, though, because it's an absolute 90's gem. The Hüsker Dü frontman Bob Mould founded Sugar in the 90's after leaving Hüsker Dü.



Compared to Hüsker Dü, Sugar is a lot more melodic, which I really like. It does, however, still have the same heavy guitar riffs. Instead of fast tempo punk rhythms, Sugar has adopted the hard rock/grunge sounds of the early 90s. The songwriting on this album is brilliant. The songs are very melodic and there are lots of catchy choruses to sing along to and nod your head to. I only bought this album on a CD in a classic black-sided CD case second hand at Flash Back here in London less than a year ago when I had a phase where I felt really nostalgic for 90's alternative rock.

The album starts with heavy beating guitar riffs in the song The Act We Act. It really reminds me of the Pixies albums that had been released only a couple of years earlier. The chorus is amazingly catchy and I bet it would've been an amazing song to jump to live. This is followed by A Good Idea, which starts beautifully with metallic bass sounds and some bubbling water sounds from a bong. The vocals are really American with all the appropriate nasal. Changes reminds me of another great album that came out in the same year, New Miserable Experience by The Gin Blossoms. It has that same kind of combination of catchy melodies, guitar riffs and chiming electric guitars. Helpless is an absolute party song with its uptempo and catchy verse. Hoover Dam has some beautiful sharp and metallic acoustic guitar sounds. This song almost seems to combine all the elements together that made MTV so great to me when I was young. The Slim has some more acoustic guitars and the slower tempo makes it sound a lot like a grunge song in the style of Pearl Jam or Soundgarden. If I Can't Change Your Mind is an amazing hit song that reminds me of Gin Blossoms, Teenage Fanclub and Ugly Kid Joe. I can't believe I didn't at least remember hearing this song before when I started listening to this album a few years ago. This is such an obvious hit. Fortune Teller cranks up the sounds slightly to a heavier direction. This song sounds more like the old Hüsker Dü songs. Slick is an example of 90's slacker rock that must've influenced the slacker rock bands of today. The album ends with the song Man on the Moon, which has some of the rawest guitars on the album. The guitar walls make me almost think of shoegaze of the early 90's, but the drum beats tell me otherwise. There are also some sharp guitar solos that seem to predict the sound of White Stripes ten years later.

I would've been really surprised if I hadn't found any proper 90's music videos from Sugar, since it's so clearly a product of the generation X that filled MTV in the early 90's. The video for If I Can't Change Your Mind is a classic 90's music video where the band is playing the song in the attic with the camera zooming in and out. The colours, the clothes and of course the sounds are really nostalgic to me, having spent much of my pre-teen years watching MTV in the grunge era.

Sugar's Copper Blue is a mostly forgotten 1990's gem and I think anyone who liked the alternative rock in the 90's but hasn't heard this album should really listen to it right away. It's also a great example of what the early 90's sounded like to someone who has only heard the hit songs from that era.

Listen to the album on Spotify.