Sugar - Copper Blue (Deluxe Edition) (2012)

The singer with grunge pioneers Husker Du, Bob Mould was an influence on Nirvana. As Sugar’s name implies, Mould’s next band were a poppier proposition. The trio’s debut, Copper Blue was NME and Select’s album of the year in 1992, and rightly so: there wasn’t a better pop album from the grunge scene, every song a taut masterpiece The Boo Radleys spent their career trying to emulate and which Pearl Jam can only dream of.

Husker Du’s fire was still present in bristling epic The Slim, but Helpless and The Act We Act were Mould deciding to use his critical plaudits to aim for the charts. It didn’t quite succeed, but that’s not the fault of a wonderful guitar-pop record. It peaked on If I Can’t Change Your Mind, a heavenly, up-tempo tune which would be played every 10 minutes on Radio 2 if only REM had made it.

How ironic that after years fronting the hugely influential but desperately overlooked Hüsker Dü, Bob Mould's first project with new band Sugar, 1992's Copper Blue, would become the most commercially successful project of his career. Of course, it was released just as the seeds sown by his former band were bearing bountiful fruits in the post-Nirvana alternative nation, which provided ample explanation for its phenomenal success. But Sugar were well deserving of their success, regardless of time and place. A more aggressive, contemporary guitar attack aside, stunning power punk masterpieces like "The Act We Act," "The Slim," and "Fortune Teller" bear all of the vintage Mould musical traits: tell-tale lyrics, great hooks, and snappy melodies. It's all underpinned by that unexplainable, chilling tension between innocent beauty and dark melancholy that fans came to expect from Mould, and topped by his somewhat nasal, almost timid vocal harmonies. Other highlights include the '60s-style "If I Can't Change Your Mind," the loud, beautiful guitars of "Man on the Moon" and "Helpless," and the tongue-in-cheek Pixies tribute "A Good Idea."