The Act We Act by Sugar, my song of the year for 1992

At the beginning of the Coen brothers movie Barton Fink, movie mogul Jack Lipnick gives writer Barton Fink his assignment: “We all want it to have that Barton Fink feeling—I guess we all have that Barton Fink feeling—but since you’re Barton Fink, I’m assuming you have it in spades.”

I imagine Bob Mould must have felt like this in the early nineties, as one band after another drew inspiration from his band Hüsker Dü and rode it to a level of commercial success far beyond what they ever experienced. It seems everyone wanted that Bob Mould feeling, and it was provided by The Pixies, Nirvana, My Bloody Valentine, and countless others.

Mould evidently decided his moment had finally come. As he reflected years later, “the success of [Nirvana’s] Nevermind re-tempered the ears of the listeners throughout the world. 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.” He formed the band Sugar and released Copper Blue, a meticulous distillation of his most successful ideas. While Sugar never played a stadium tour, they still sold 300,000 copies of Copper Blue. Mould’s timing was perfect.

It’s a remarkable record: rhythmically propulsive, texturally dense, and deceptively complex harmonically. And as much as Mould influenced his contemporaries, they influenced him as well. To pick one example, it’s impossible to mistake the influence of “Debaser” by the Pixies on Sugar’s “A Good Idea”. Mould later called it “an unconscious homage”.

Choosing a single song to represent this record was surprisingly difficult. There isn’t a weak track on the album, and I tend to listen to it all the way through, a relative rarity for me. In the end, I chose “The Act We Act” because it opens the album. I still get a thrill from hearing the opening guitar riff, and I instinctively turn up the volume and settle in for the trip through all ten tracks. I recommend you do the same.