Everything Falls Apart is really excellent early 80’s punk: fast, punchy and loud but not screamy and it’s melodic without being emo. My top tracks are the lead track “From the Gut” with its excellent rat-a-tat-tat drum attack, the lightning-quick “Punch Drunk” and “Bricklayer,” both of which would have fit nicely onto the Suicidal Tendencies s/t album released the same year,  the hilarious punk’d up cover of Donovan’s “Sunshine Superman” and the dark, angsty poli-anthemic “Target.” Bob Mould did not perform any song from Everything Falls Apart at the Backyard BBQ but he did play a couple of later Hüsker Dü numbers including “Flip Your Wig,” “Hate Paper Doll” and “Hardly Getting Over It.” It was a family-friendly event and Mould is in his 60’s so the whiplash pace and angry-young-man vibe of Everything Falls Apart probably wasn’t the best choice for the show.

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Blue Hearts is aggressively loud (I’m pretty sure I lost a decent amount of my hearing at a Sugar show back in the early 90’s) and dense yet still melodic, like most Mould albums. My top tracks are “Next Generation,” the all-out rager “American Crisis,” “Siberian Butterfly,” the very catchy “Baby Needs a Cookie” and the LP closer “The Ocean.”

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Beaster is a 6-song EP, released in ’93, comprised of tracks recorded during the Copper Blue sessions. Less alt-pop, more noise-pop, Mould describes Beaster as “a lot wilder than Copper Blue…[its] evil twin” with twisted and heavy guitar and religious imagery. It charted at #3 in the UK and #130 in the US (though at #4 on that Heatseekers chart) and Sugar released two singles – “Tilted” and “JC Auto” – both tracks released on a limited 7″ in the UK which went to #48.  I don’t think I listened to Beaster much in the 90’s, though I do have it dubbed on an old cassette somewhere around here.

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I’m pretty sure we saw Sugar when they were on tour for this album, so probably late ‘94 or early ‘95, at the Rave in Milwaukee. I stood far too close to the speakers just at the side of the stage and the buzz in my head that lingered for days matches the buzzy quality of many of the record’s songs.

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