My Top 1000 Songs #546: A Good Idea

[I've been writing up my Top 1000 songs on a daily basis--you can see them all in descending order by hitting the All My Favorite Songs tag.]

Sugar's 1992 debut Copper Blue was an unexpected treat, Bob Mould pivoting from a couple post-Hüsker Dü solo records back to a rock & roll trio, emphasizing the Dü's pop side while showing what he could do with some big, booming production replacing that the thin SST sound of yore.

Plenty of great songs therein--more to come, check this space!--but it was "A Good Idea" that made the biggest immediate visceral impact on me. Mould repurposes the Pixies' "Debaser" bassline and sonic dynamics (building on the prior year's similar repurposing on Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit"), but adds a fistful of absolutely terrifying menace. Like Neil Young had done some time before him, he leaves her body down by the river, but screw metaphor, we're right there watching him hold her under the water. Dark, ugly, a 90s alt.rock horror movie you can't turn away from... but, ooh, that rumbling bass! 

Sugar reunited (kind of, with Superchunk's Jon Wurster on drums), 2013: