If I Can't POLL Your Mind: Sugar's "Copper Blue"

"ha..HA...uh let's get a second track with uhhh...." KA-CHUNK DENG DENG

tough poll

"The Act We Act". Love this album.

really tough. there may be three songs on here i don't love. and even those are pretty good.

Everything until "Fortune Teller" is a winner.

i do really dig slick though

A Good Idea vs. Changes vs. Hoover Dam for me... really tough.

best powerpop album ever!

(not really)

Maybe Geir thinks so.

"the slim"
for richer, for poorer, for anything

Hoover Dam vs. The Act We Act vs. Helpless vs. If I Can't Change Your Mind for me . . . a nearly impossible decision. I don't think I can vote until I hear the album again.

A Good Idea

Went with "Changes," a perfect manifesto, over "Hoover Dam" and its synth solo, and "Helpless." "The Act We Act" is a monster of an opener though.

"If I Can't Change Your Mind" is not only my fave song off this album, it's one of my fave songs of all time. OF ALL TIME. Can't be anything but that for me.

good idea or change your mind

I thought I was going to be the only one to vote for Changes! Those ringing chords to open it ...

man on the moon

i should listen to this album again...

i have no idea where my copy of this went but now i really want to listen to it. even the song titles brought me back. this album screams of early college for me.

I own a signed vinyl copy of this record. Hoover Dam, for the great lyrics.

It's funny, I listened to this album again recently for the first time in years and really enjoyed it. When I first moved away from home to London to find work I spent a trying couple of months pacing the streets handing in CVs and this record -having not long been released- was one that I listened to a lot, but not much since. It was nice to revisit and sent me off on the trail of other records from that same period.

For many of us this album was a gateway to lots of great music.

Haven't listened to this in forever, but 'Changes' playing over in my mind is making me slightly goose-pimpled, so that basically.

Hoover Dam. Is he really saying "covered up with lava and I feel fine"? he cant be.

He is!

I really love this album except the first and last tracks. Plumping for Hoover Dam, although in a different mood I could easily have gone for A Good Idea.

Great from beginning to end. The Act We Act is probably the one that moves me the most, but I could easily choose most of the other tracks too.

"He is!"

Then I wish I could vote for it twice!

Actually recently pulled this out again after a while on the shelf, because of all the Husker talk here recently, and while that reinforced my love for "If I Can't Change Your Mind" I'm wondering if anyone else is finding the production on this a little harsh, in retrospect? Still love the songs themselves but by about four tracks in I was feeling tense for no apparent reason.

Also realized that while I love the Pixies homage in "A Good Idea", the song goes on at least one minute too long.

"If I Can't Change Your Mind"

loving the shrinkwrap on that cover pic

"Hoover Dam" - sometimes I think this is the best song of the 90's.

I loved this album, but always found it mastered far too harsh and loud (for my poor little ears) and therefore really tiring to listen to . An early example of the abuses of brick-wall limiting? I wonder how it compares to today's mastering jobs.

I went with "Helpless" for its strut (and I think it's the poppiest song on here), but live versions of "The Slim" (like the one on Besides) are orders of magnitude better than the album version: Mould's vocal roar sounds like it comes from a very dark place: as articulate a moan as I know.

I loved, loved, loved this back in the day. Back then I'd have gone for Hoover Dam but I might have to revisit before voting.

The B-Side live take on Where Diamonds Are Halos has some extraordinary guitar iirc.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

I should have included a couple of the B-sides like "Needle Hits E" to make things innaresting.

If Geir doesn't love this album (or, at least significant portions of it), I'll eat my trousers.

Went for "Helpless" because it never was a single (except for a SOL 7" single which was my intro to this)

It's probably to "heavy rock" for him.

Went for "Helpless" because it never was a single

i have a single of it, maybe it was an Aus-only thing

this one http://www.discogs.com/Sugar-Helpless/release/1223251

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Yeah, this album is good enough for almost every track to get a vote. Still, "Beaster" is even better.

"The Act We Act" – 5:10 9
"A Good Idea" – 3:47 9
"Helpless" – 3:05 9
"Hoover Dam" – 5:27 7

totally down w/ these results. I never got IICCYM.

totally down w/ these results. I never got IICCYM

otm. i mean, there's a great poll out there for songs in the key of "who you gonna believe baby, me or your own eyes" but even there "suspicious minds" is gonna kill it.

Wow -- one of the closer polls we've done, no? I guess this album really is beloved.

what's on your mind so helpless i

This record.

i think on cvb thread somebody mentioned sugar in relation to cracker. it's obviously the case in hindsight, but i never thought of sugar as mould's alt cash-in in the same way cracker was lowery's, partially cuz doing it on an indie put a ceiling on how far the band could crossover, and partially because sugar wasn't as much of a flagrant dumbing-down

That line from the SPIN book ("Sugar can't be compared to Husker Du" or whatever; it's not on me) is true. If you want an apt comparison, it's Wings.

Wings if John was the one who wanted to make arena-pop

while still primal screaming

AND NOW I SWIM ALONE
THE SLIM...ALONE

People go on about how Mould at least wanted those Husker albums to sound pretty much as they did...makes you wonder how much conceptually this was thought out, given the muscularity of the Copper Blue/Beaster albums

Money helps. Husker Du were self-produced after 1984.

Mould solo is a pointer - Workbook is a million miles from Warehouse but he's obviously fond of that muddier dense guitar heavy sound, going by Black Sheets Of Rain

TBH Copper Blue is the yardstick I use to measure most rock records.

I think that was my sugar/cracker (mm sugar cracker) comparison. sugar was def better and that first album for me is the moment alt rock kinda hit me hard the first time, coming as I was from a teen metalhead perspective. I listened to copper blue 10x as much as nevermind.

better cover too

This is the one of the best side As of any guitar album ever

Sugar's anger and frustration always felt genuine, I can still relate to the songs and follow their emotional path. Cracker, on the other hand, quickly wore out their welcome for me as their cynicism and sarcasm faded over time. I still own Sugar's entire body of work but sold my Cracker discs.

Say what you will about Husker Du's production, but coming to love the way "Zen Arcade" and "Flip Your Wig" sounded was one of the triumphs of my music listening life. Fell so hard I feel I had to eventually relearn an appreciation of "good" production.

guitar tone on this record is genuinely unbelievable, wish there were 10000 bands that ripped off that sound

guitar tone: 6000 guitars recorded and interred in sugar crystal molecule.

this record is fab but "Gift" on the second record is their best moment. it seems like they add more layers of guitars after each verse. and it's one of my favorite drumming tracks too, sounds like there's an army of drummers that too keep accruing as the track drives on.

said it above but live versions of "The Slim" kill me still.

even more amazing to me: Needle Hits E was a B-side!

Hoover Dam for me.

I wrote about Copper Blue here:

https://devonrecordclub.com/2017/08/31/sugar-copper-blue-round-102-toms-selection/

It just gets better and better with time. as far as I am concerned.

This is literally one of my favorite albums ever.
I know a lot of Husker Du fans who *hate* this record.
I really don't understand it...
They seem to think Mould was attempting to "reinvent" himself and that was bad.

Yeah, it is terrible how he took the sound of Husker Du, wrote some insanely great songs, actually had production which made them sound good, and managed to sell a few records while grunge was exploding.

one of my favorite albums ever.

otm

try supplanting any of Mould’s Husker Du tracks for a song on Copper Blue and it would only serve to weaken the album…

"Something I Learned Today" segueing right into "A Good Idea" would be wild, but you make a fair point.

I am a huge Husker Du fan, but I've always listened to this album, which I love, as the first time Bob Moulds pop songs approached Grant Harts.

25 today

so crunchy

lol nycnative otm, I'm not a husker fan but this albums rocks and has hooks for days.

feel so helpless
IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

Such a good record. I feel like I've been neglecting it lately.

Why was there so much good rock in the early 90s?

This is pretty much a perfectly sequenced album - no wonder he would play the first 4/5 songs in order live

(The end of “Changes” going into “Helpless”)

This is pretty much a perfectly sequenced album

It's amazing to recall how perfectly positioned Mould was to earn plaudits and sales. Copper Blue almost went gold here without charting. Beaster peaked at #3 on the UK album chart!

I'd say Bob Mould was as popular as he ever was in Husker Du when they were starting out. I saw Sugar at a pretty much full Bogarts in Cincy before they had a record out, which was probably 3x times the crowd when I saw Bob Mould on the Black Sheets of Rain tour in Bloomington.

Sugar was a wall of sound live, really intense.

Thinking about it...kinda wild I don't think Sugar played any of the Lollapalooza's did they? I think they might have been on one of those big July 4th Chicago Grant Park shows I think (I know the Replacements broke up at one of those).

They played some of the big festivals in Europe as a buddy saw them in the Netherlands at one.

I'd say Bob Mould was as popular as he ever was in Husker Du when they were starting out. I saw Sugar at a pretty much full Bogarts in Cincy before they had a record out, which was probably 3x times the crowd when I saw Bob Mould on the Black Sheets of Rain tour in Bloomington.

In the liner notes to the 2012 reissue, Mould agrees w/you, but with Sugar he says the crowd tripled and quadrupled.

You know we missed the 30th anniversary of this last month. And per a couple of comments after I posted about this elsewhere (and I'm sure noted upthread or elsewhere on here) this and _Automatic for the People_ coming out the same month has a real resonance that lingers.

is it simple? is it simple?

in a moment, just a moment

i need some sort of alert when i haven't listened to this in a full year

how the hell "Slick" get none? that's my jam

Too many great songs but yes Slick is great and also kinda funny!

They! Said! The road was slick

Everything until "Fortune Teller" is a winner.

I was about to say, "Oh, come on! Slick is a great song!"

But then I realized I was thinking of The Slim.

(Slick is still cool though. And then I can shut it down before Bob chortles and Man in the Moon hits.)