A mighty waterfall of Beatle-ish melodies and grunge dynamics, Bob Mould’s most interesting power-pop anthem arrived out of a transparent blue sky, plopping into the previous Hüsker Dü frontman’s psychological inbox on some jingle-jangle morning in the summertime of 1991.
“It was this dream track that simply turned up as I used to be waking up one morning,” Mould remembers. “It got here to me absolutely shaped, after which it’s simply all of the baubles that make it that loopy baroque band factor. All that was just about in my head too, however it’s important to sit down and make these baubles shine. That’s the manufacturing stuff.”
Named after the architecturally gorgeous construction that towers over the Colorado River on the border between Arizona and Nevada, Hoover Dam was written simply as Mould’s profession was in free fall.
Hüsker Dü, the groundbreaking various rock band he’d co-founded in Minneapolis on the finish of the 70s, had acrimoniously break up in 1987. Laid low by dangerous enterprise choices and poor gross sales for his 1990 solo album Black Sheets Of Rain, Mould fired his supervisor, accountants and lawyer in early 1991.
In March he and his then-partner Kevin O’Neill relocated from downtown Manhattan to an enormous loft in run-down Williamsburg. Hoover Dam got here collectively in that condominium.
It was this dream track that simply turned up as I used to be waking up one morning. It got here to me absolutely shaped.
Bob Mould
In a bid to salvage his ailing profession, Mould spent a lot of 1991 on punishing however profitable solo excursions, increase his financial savings and stockpiling new songs. He typically discovered himself sharing a competition invoice with an thrilling younger band referred to as Nirvana, who even briefly thought-about him as a possible producer for Nevermind.
In the meantime, his personal post-hardcore songwriting took a extra melodic flip, drawing on childhood heroes such because the Seashore Boys and The Byrds. Shaking off the grim introspection of his solo albums Workbook and Black Sheets Of Rain, Mould started forging the muscular sunshine-grunge sound that may outline his subsequent challenge, Sugar.
“Sugar was actually the third solo document,” Mould remembers. “It wasn’t a response to something, it was extra me simply digging in, writing songs on a regular basis, lightening up after Black Sheets Of Rain, trying extra on the pop facet. Low cost Trick’s In Shade was undoubtedly an enormous touchstone for that document.”
The lyric to Hoover Dam begins as reportage and shortly turns into metaphor. ‘Standing on the sting of the Hoover Dam’ is a superb cinematic opening, evoking a way of prompt vertigo and imminent danger. “I’m simply taking within the majesty of it,” says Mould. “It’s fairly overwhelming. That’s identical to actually taking notes, then constructing this track round it.”
Because the lyric unfolds, Mould expands on the widescreen imagery to counsel a narrator caught ‘between two states of thoughts’, simply because the dam straddles the road between Nevada and Arizona. He runs via his choices: getting washed away by the Mississippi river, buried beneath volcanic lava, or sucked down the plughole to hell. And he makes all of them sound unusually cheerful.
“The Mississippi divides the nation,” Mould explains. “It’s utilizing metaphor to create this back-and-forth factor, the place you’re on one facet of the road or one other. The most important supposition I’ve heard from music critics is: Is that this a suicide track? With the Hoover Dam, in the event you slide down you’re useless. Or with the Mississippi, in the event you go in you’re going to finish up on the backside. It simply tied these pictures collectively. Nevertheless it’s a songwriter track, not a confessional.”
As his musical rebirth started to take form, Mould signed separate offers with two indie labels: Rykodisc within the US and the fabled Creation in London. The molten noise-rock euphoria of Loveless by Creation labelmates My Bloody Valentine would turn into one other main affect on the lysergic, calmly psychedelic, honey-churning sound of Sugar.
The most important supposition I’ve heard is: ‘Is that this a suicide track?’ Nevertheless it’s a songwriter track, not a confessional.
Bob Mould
To finish his nascent new band, Mould introduced in David Barbe and Malcolm Travis from his nationwide community of indie-rock associates and former studio collaborators, and preliminary rehearsals started in January 1992. The trio chosen their stage title solely once they have been requested to play an unplanned debut present, filling in for a last-minute cancellation.
“We would have liked a band title,” Mould says. “We have been having breakfast and there was a pack of sugar on the desk, so we selected that. Up till that time it might have been a Bob Mould document.”
Quickly afterwards the trio travelled north to The Outpost studio in Massachusetts to start recording Sugar’s debut, Copper Blue. Co-producer and former Hüsker Dü engineer Lou Giordiano helped finesse the extra baroque touches to Hoover Dam, together with a Seashore Boys-inspired organ intro and a shimmering harpsichord solo.
Launched in September 1992, Copper Blue grew to become a essential smash and transatlantic Prime 10 hit, cementing Mould’s popularity because the godfather of grunge. With 300,000 gross sales and counting, the album stays his all-time best-seller.
“It was proper document, proper time,” he says. “American hardcore and various rock set the stage for bands within the late eighties like Pixies and Nirvana. Then Nevermind set the stage for an album like Copper Blue.”
Hoover Dam wasn’t chosen as one of many album’s three singles. But it nonetheless grew to become considered one of Mould’s best-loved signature anthems, and stays an compulsory fixture in his dwell set to at the present time.
“It appears like I wrote it final week,” he says. “It actually does. It was such an incredible time. I used to be digging myself out of a gap. I needed to work my ass off, tour on a regular basis, get sufficient cash to make a dwelling. However then, by the point the meal was cooked, the desk was already set.”
Initially revealed in Traditional Rock concern 204 (November 2014)
