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Sunday 4 September 2016

Let The Day Begin...Let The Day Start!: Day 248 - Sugar

Copper Blue - Sugar
Creation / Rykodisc
Produced by Bob Mould and Lou Giordano
Released 4th September 1992
UK Chart #10


 Tracklist
The Act We Act
A Good Idea
Changes
Helpless
Hoover Dam
The Slim
If I Can't Change Your Mind
Fortune Teller
Slick
Man On The Moon

Personnel
    Bob Mould - guitars, vocals, keyboards, percussion
    David Barbe - bass
    Malcolm Travis - drums, percussion

Singles from Copper Blue

Creation 12" UK
Did Not Chart

Creation 12" UK
UK Chart #65

Creation 12" UK
UK Chart #30

*******************
Back last year I included Copper Blue in the occasional series The Best Debut Albums and rightly so. Twenty Four years on from its release it is still an album that is captivating from start to finish.

NME named it as their Album of the Year in 1992 and it was then and still is the most successful of all the projects that Bob Mould has been involved in (including hiw work with Hüsker Dü and his various Solo albums).

After two Solo albums, Workbook (1989) - which had been a quieter affair than anything he done previously with  Hüsker Dü - and Black Sheets of Rain (1990) - which was a bit of a return to the heavier sound - Bob Mould took a short detour from his solo career and put together a new band called Sugar.

On the 20th anniversary of the album The Quietus posted a great assessment of the album and an interview with Bob Mould discussing Copper Blue. Part of their conclusion regarding the album then I would be in hearty agreement with today:

"Revisiting Copper Blue is to find an album that hasn’t dated in the slightest. It deals with the kind of universal truths that aren’t time bound and its animalistic sonic power remains undiminished. Indeed, listening to the newly re-mastered version of this masterpiece is to be introduced to even more strength and energy than one had expected. Ultimately, Copper Blue is an album that not only sounds as good now as it did twenty years ago, but also one that’ll still blow cobwebs away two decades hence."


Whilst recording Copper Blue they also managed to record enough songs to make the follow up, Beaster. I have a few friends who seem to prefer that to the debut, but for me Copper Blue remains one of my most favourite albums ever and I have lost count as to how many times I've played it in the 24 years since its release (easily into four figures now I reckon).

In 2012 Bob Mould toured all over the place playing the album from start to finish and to this day many of the songs from it still feature in his live set.


Songs From Copper Blue Live
Bob Mould




Let The Day Begin...Let The Day Start!

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