Feeling Blue

It's relatively common - at least in my experience - to fall head over heels for an album, only for it to gradually lose that initial lustre, its appeal fading with the passage of time. How much rarer it is, though, to come across a record that actually seems to sound better with every single play - especially one that does so three decades after its release.

Sugar's Copper Blue celebrates that milestone birthday this year and has been pretty much playing on repeat since I saw its architect Bob Mould at the Globe in June - and I don't think I've ever loved it more than I do now.

This article by Louder's Stephen Hill sets out the context for Copper Blue's composition and release (principally, the extraordinary success of Nirvana's Nevermind - Mould enthusing "It was a heavy, punky record, but there was something about it that was so accessible that it opened up all these pathways for other musicians - myself included - to have our music heard") and tells the story of how Sugar came to sign a UK deal with Alan McGee's Creation.

But the piece also succinctly articulates what makes Copper Blue so special: "Every track manages to conjure similar feelings of both fizzy pop rush with the threat of something ominous lurking beneath the surface."

Proclaiming it to be "the high watermark of Bob Mould's career", as Hill does, is liable to get you lynched by hardcore Husker Du fans, but - as someone who feels that the extremely lo-fi production values of most HD albums do the songs a serious disservice - I've been saying much the same for years. Having never seen the Du do their thing live (which Michael Azerrad's Our Band Could Be Your Life leads me to believe was quite something), I can only go on the recorded evidence - and by that measure, Sugar are the superior power trio.

Hill concludes: "30 years on, it still hits like it was released last week." This is where we disagree - I think if anything, it actually hits harder.