A potent taste of Sugar

After the raging powerhouse of Husker Du, Bob Mould has found an exciting new vehicle for his songs, as Allan Campbell discovers

Bob Mould is standing on the edge of the Hoover Dam. As the music whips around him he sings "I’m on the centreline, right between two states of mind." Later, he senses a "slight insanity" and imagines being washed down the Mississippi to New Orleans. Then a vertiginous carousel ride leads to him plummeting to the centre of the earth, where hot lava washes over him and he frets over "the guy with the horns and the cape"

Sugar’s Hoover Dam may not be the greatest lyric but when the guitars chime in and Mould builds in the lines, brick by brick, the results are characteristically solid and impressive. The words offer a shorthand guide to some of the elements which have concerned Mould over the last decade, first with Husker Du, then as a solo artist, now with Sugar; dizzying altitude, a wide-ranging geography, physical and metaphorical edges and a certain spiritual sturm und drang are whisked into a centrifugal force of guitars.

It’s big, important stuff; people in crises and underneath the surface a very male, Hemingwayesque hysteria. There is always a feeling of movement - speed principally. As Mould faces the gales of guitars it’s almost as if he wants all of his impurities burnt off in the blast.

Obviously Mould is no lightweight; his previous group, Husker Du, were idolised for the purity of their vision and their tough, self contained dynamic. If you were feeling bullish, you could easily argue that in the Eighties only two groups ever really mattered; The Smiths in Britain and Husker Du in America. Both were very different musically, but, equally, both had a certain puritan beauty and both collapsed amid much personal rancour when the dream soured.

These were two of the most hotly debated break-ups in recent pop history. The demise of Husker Du in particular spawned many strange stories, not the least of which was that the three group members had been lovers and that the affair had simply ended. The real reasons were more prosaic; their creative spark had been dimmed by overwork and the depression which had set in with the suicide of their manager and the heroin habit of their drummer.

But, along the way, Husker Du had left granite-hard statements such as Land Speed Record, Zen Arcade, New Day Rising, Flip Your Wig, Metal Circus and Candy Apple Grey which, more than any other group, helped lay the foundations of the current Nirvana-led flannel revolution.

"Husker Du was a band created out of an incredible frustration from watching my contemporaries in their late teens decide to sign on to the young Republican bandwagon," explains Mould. "I didn’t know it then, I knew it as time went on, that it was a call - a scream - against this young Republican nonsense."

After the break-up, Mould spent 18 months in solitary, preparing a large number of far more introspective songs which would later become his solo albums, Workbook and Black Sheets of Rain.

"I was pretty disillusioned with the music business for a while," he says of his exile. " I was never disillusioned with making music. Whether I envisioned other people hearing the things I was working on … that was pretty doubtful."

Most who heard the solo Mould were favourably impressed, but Husker Du fans looking for a replacement power trio were disappointed. Now, after forming Sugar with bassist David Barbe and drummer Malcolm Travis, they seem satisfied but, says Mould, it’s not the same thing at all.

"It’s not the same time, it’s not the same emotional content, it’s not the same delivery. It’s not meant to be the same. Everybody in this group has got their head on real straight as far as their personal time and their public time is concerned. I don’t think we’re going to have any big ego problems with the band. That was never really the case with Husker DU, post 1983."

Sugar’s debut LP, Copper Blue, possesses a more "upbeat spirit" than past efforts and boasts more than enough blistering guitar work to satisfy diehard fans. Mould’s fretwork treads brilliantly the fine line between noise and melody.

The excitement with which the album has been greeted further consigns Husker Du to the realms of memory. "It’s a record we made this year, dealing with this year’s feelings and last year’s writings. It’s not the kind of band people are going to be able to look to for the tried and the true. In other words, expect the unexpected."

For a group who had never met together until their first rehearsal, the results are rarely less than startling. And Mould knows full well that he’s onto a good thing.

"A lot of the second record is finished and musically it beats no relation to anything that I think anybody has ever heard on this earth. That might sound like a big statement but I feel fairly confident making it."

Just where all this will lead is too early to say, but the power that Sugar can harness is undeniable. "I’m in the middle of the tornado," says Mould. "I don’t know how much damage it can do."

Copper Blue is on Creation Records, as is the forthcoming single, A Good Idea. Be appearing live at The Venue, Edinburgh (tomorrow) and The Mayfair, Glasgow (Monday).

Reproduced from The Scotsman Weekend 3rd October 1992

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