Tickets are now available to see SUGAR at Rock City!
Having already placed his indelible mark on modern music with Hüsker Dü and solo album Workbook, Bob Mould enlisted bassist David Barbe and drummer Malcolm Travis leading to the formation of SUGAR, who made their live debut in early 1992 at Athens, GA’s famed 40 Watt Club. Named by NME as its 1992 Album of the Year, SUGAR’s now-classic debut album, Copper Blue, immediately proved a sensation, earning worldwide acclaim and landmark status for the melodic strength and intensely cathartic popcraft of songs like ‘A Good Idea’, ‘Helpless’, and the alternative rock radio hit and MTV favourite, ‘If I Can’t Change Your Mind’. The trio quickly found themselves performing on increasingly larger stages, including a legendary show-stealing set at London’s Great X-pectations Festival in Finsbury Park.
With the wind at their back, SUGAR unleashed Beaster in 1993, making a momentous debut at #3 on the UK’s Official Albums Chart as well as at #4 on Billboard’s Heatseekers chart in the US. Though recorded during the same sessions that yielded Copper Blue, the six-song mini-album evinced a more visceral energy and dark melancholy than its predecessor, highlighted by such pulverising expressions of sacrilegious fury as ‘Judas Cradle’ and ‘JC Auto’. 1994’s second full-length LP, File Under: Easy Listening once again made an explosive arrival among the top 10 on the UK Official Albums Chart, this time landing in the upper reaches of the overall Billboard 200. The album saw SUGAR pushing boundaries yet again on songs like the Americana-tinged ‘Believe What You’re Saying’ and the incendiary ‘Gee Angel’, tackling a wider range of musical approaches without sacrificing their signature intensity and unrestrained power. Despite their successes, SUGAR called it a day following a Japanese tour in early 1995. A series of live recordings, reissues, and anthologies served to magnify the band’s legacy over the three decades since, confirming SUGAR as incontrovertible masters of high-volume guitar-fuelled rock for the ages. The original members of SUGAR reconvened in June 2025 to record ‘House Of Dead Memories’ & “Long Live Love, the first new SUGAR songs in over three decades.
SUGAR has partnered with PLUS1 so that €2/£2 from every ticket sold will go to organizations working to support and empower the health and wellbeing of LGBTQ+ communities. www.plus1.org
For more events, check out the gig guide here.