Sugar

File Under: Easy Listening

A textbook example of the ‘difficult second album’.

Following Copper Blue and the even fiercer Beaster EP, Sugar’s second album peaked at No.7, three places higher than Copper Blue, on the UK album chart. Mould’s most mainstream-sounding work, where hard rock comes close to battling a duel with pop, it’s an appropriately titled album. But behind its playful and laidback folksy exterior lurks a machine ready to explode, as the title’s acronym suggests.

It doesn’t meet the thrill of Copper Blue, instead falling somewhere between Mould’s solo work and late-career Dü.