Consumer Guide Album

Sugar: Copper Blue [Rykodisc, 1992]
The miracle isn't that Bob Mould has progressed, thank God. It's that he's picked up where he left off. After six years spent straining over Warehouse: Songs and Stories and two overarranged records with his name on the cover (why do you think they call them solo efforts?), he not only fabricates a Hüsker Dü album but makes it sound as if it just rushed out of him, like a great Hüsker Dü album should. Never mind who takes Grant Hart's place, because it isn't the new drummer. Fashioning the popwise tunes that were always Hart's specialty and taking on all the vocals himself, the new musician is Mould. Maybe he has progressed after all. A-