Volume was certainly a point of notoriety, and perhaps pride, for Sugar during its four-year run during the early and mid 1990s. The group was “somewhere between oppressively and astonishingly loud,” says bass guitarist David Barbe in the new online mini-documentary Changes: The Story of Sugar.
Is it still the case now that the trio is reunited and touring for the first time since 1995?
“I can’t tell,” singer-guitarist Bob Mould tells us. “I think so. It is not as loud at my microphone as it used to be. I’m using half the amps I did in the loud Sugar days.”
Nevertheless, social media comments gave a different perspective following Sugar’s August 15 show at Seattle’s Paramount Theatre.
“There were people reviewing it saying it was the loudest show they’d ever seen at the Paramount,” Mould says. “And there’s been a lot of loud shows in there, I’m sure, especially a lot of stuff in the ’90s that was pretty loud.
“So I don’t know. We’re not trying to kill people with it anymore. I mean, I can’t take it either.”
Loud or not, there’s no question that Sugar’s is a particularly welcome and unexpected return. Launched by Mould in 1992 after the demise of Hüsker Dü and a pair of solo albums, Sugar wasn’t around long enough to get tired of. Its two albums — 1992’s Copper Blue and 1994’s File Under: Easy Listening — and the brutal 1993 Beaster EP were all well-received, and songs such as “Helpless,” “Your Favorite Thing” and “If I Can’t Change Your Mind” are classics from that era in alt rock.
Mould played Copper Blue in its entirety during a 2012 20th anniversary tour, and last October he, Barbe and drummer Malcolm Travis announced live dates for May in New York and London, which led to a Love You Even Still 2026 World Tour touring through the balance of the year. After three recent sold-out dates in Mould’s hometown of Minneapolis, Sugar resumes touring on September 19 at Riot Fest in Chicago, with shows running through October.
Sugar — which reconvened quietly during October of 2024 in Athens, Georgia, where Barbe is director of the University of Georgia’s Music Business Certificate Program — also recorded a trio of new songs (“House of Dead Memories,” “Long Live Love,” “Keep Looping”) in June 2025 for the occasion.
“It’s feeling good,” says Mould, 65. “It feels similar — not the same. I mean, times are different. Many years have passed. All of us have a little extra wear and tear — band, audience, et cetera. But it’s been really fun.
“It’s been a couple of years in the making, but everybody was in a good space personally, there was interest already percolating on the business side, so the timing was good. And now here we are.”
Mould — who considers himself “the worst gear guy in the world” — says he’s armed a bit differently this time out.
“It’s essentially the same rig,” he says of his current setup. “It’s a 4×12 with a Blackstar 100-watt tube head and a Fender Deluxe. It’s the same Strats that I was playing — not the exact same blue one, but the same year, make and model. The necks are a little different, a little thinner and easier to play in my old age. So practically the same gear, just a little less firepower.”
His electric guitars are late ’80s American Standard Plus Stratocasters.
“They have the Fender Lace Sensor pickups as opposed to humbuckers,” Mould says. “I bought the first one in ’88 when I was up on the farm in northern Minnesota. I stopped at a music store one day and saw it, picked it up and played it. It sounded great unplugged, so I bought it and that became the blue Strat.
“I just kept buying more of those in different colors and different neck thicknesses. I’m using a black ’89 Strat Plus now. It’s been my main guitar for the last eight, 10 years… ‘cause it’s easy to play,” he says with a laugh. “The radius of the neck is a little less, so as opposed to the big reach now it’s a little shorter reach.
“And, again, my old hands don’t work as well as they did 35 years ago. So a lighter touch and less of a grip is what I’m working with, but it still sounds pretty good. There are other guitar players who I’ve put it in their hands and said, ‘Check it out,’ and they say, ‘What the hell is this?!’ It’s set up really low, really light. I think when [My Bloody Valentine’s] Kevin Shields hit it he was just like, ‘Wow!’ A couple of my friends are like, ‘This is crazy!’ It’s just real light — sort of lazy.”
On fly-in dates, Mould says he requests Marshall 4×12 slant stacks, preferably with Celestion Seventy 80 speakers. But he notes that “any of the big-throated Celestions are pretty good, and the Blackstar Artisan 100 is really where the sound comes from. That’s the key piece of any amp stuff I’m using; there’s really no other 100-watt tube amp that sounds quite like a Blackstar. The one I use was modeled after the Marshall Plexis. That’s the only amp that gets close to the sound I want.
“And the Fender Deluxes all sound good; the ’65s and ’68s sound a little different, but they always work good.”
Mould calls his pedal array mostly “the same old same old,” with custom-built distortion pedals from Tym Guitars in Brisbane, Australia.
“They’re sort of modeled after the MXR Distortion+, which I used forever.”
His board includes a TC Electronic Flashback looper and delay pedal, an Electro-Harmonix Freeze and a Wampler Ego Compressor. “I spent a lot of time finding the pedals that I have, that don’t have a ton of levers,” Mould explains. “It’s not an elaborate setup, that’s for sure.”
Mould is also using a Big Muff Pi in place of his Octavia pedals. He owns several of the latter, including one Shields gave him years ago, and says they “don’t leave the house anymore,”
Back in the day, Sugar had enough firepower to hang with Metallica on the European festival circuit. He’d crossed paths with the group during his years with Hüsker Dü, but seeing the Metallica machine in full flight during the early ’90s was illuminating.
“I think that was the tour Metallica had two sets of everything, piggy-backing from one show to the other,” Mould recalls. “They’d show up at a festival while the other stage would move ahead of them. I think they had washers and dryers in their flight cases. It was just sort of like, ‘Wow…’ It was a level of touring that I’d never really seen before. It was just crazy to me, coming from punk rock.”
Mould says Sugar’s focus at the moment is “to get these shows completed” before contemplating what comes next, with Barbe’s university responsibilities to be taken into account.
“The goal right now is to get through all of the live work and take a beat and see how life is looking,” says Mould, who released his 15th solo album, Here We Go Crazy, last year. “It could be fun to do more performing. It could be fun to do more recording. I don’t know how many times that would be possible, or appropriate. I’ve been chugging along with my stuff and solo work. David and Malcolm have their own things.
“I guess we’ll just see where it all lands at the end of the year — that’s the easiest answer. There’s no push to do anything right now.”
