Sugar
Webster Hall, New York NY, May 4, 2026
When Bob Mould’s mid-1990s power trio
Sugar announced its reunion tour, initially limited to shows in New York and London, I made the immediate decision to buy a ticket even before I knew that the shows would be extended to a full US reunion. I’m glad, too. Seeing Sugar in a venue the size of Webster Hall felt appropriate, but I fear their upcoming appearance at the Anthem in Washington DC will see their power and controlled vitriol sublimated into the cavernous atmosphere of venue, too large for most of its bands.
Sugar meant a great deal for me when I was in college, in Minnesota, close to Bob Mould‘s homebase, but never able to see the band in concert. I may even still own a folded Rykodisc poster of the
Copper Blue album art. And while I’ve seen Bob Mould numerous times in the intervening decades, including performing many of the songs from
Copper Blue, it seemed worthwhile to see the band in its original incarnation.
At Webster Hall, the crowd was thick with people who looked a lot like Bob Mould now does: balding white guys with beards and T-shirts, and a relative paucity of women in their 40s and 50s. Unlike some of the Mould shows I’ve seen, there seem to be fewer members of the bear community, but there were certainly some of them in attendance as well.
On night three of their residency at Webster Hall, there was no opening act, and they had celebrity DJs playing songs as the crowd gathered. On Monday, it was comedian and actor David Cross. (I was disappointed that I had missed Michael Azerrad on Saturday.) Cross played a mix of garage rock, 90s alt rock classics from the Beasties and Breeder and Public Enemy/Anthrax, and obscure psychedelic and punk tracks. But the audience was there to see the band, and given our ages and the band members’ ages, it’s a good thing that the show got off to a relatively prompt start.
I made a concerted effort not to look at the playlist from the first two nights, which apparently were replicated for every show. I wanted to be surprised. Sugar has one of the most impressive back catalogues of any band that existed for only two proper albums, plus an EP and an ambitious collection of b-sides. I could probably have thought offhand of 30 songs that I hoped to hear, and I did hear the vast majority of them, although there were always a few choice nuggets that went missing.
First things first, the band looks good. Bob Mould has carried off a transition into his stocky, bearded, sweating, avuncular self, and David Barbe is amazingly well preserved and equipped on both bass guitar and vocals. The only sign of the band’s age was drummer Malcolm Harris. Apparently, on the first night of the sets, he collapsed and fell backwards due to dehydration or exhaustion, but he seemed to hold up just fine for the show on Monday night.
Unsurprisingly, the set list hit most of the high points of
Copper Blue, as well as
File Under: Easy Listening, but there was an abundance of rarities, including B-sides, songs recorded only on their live album
The Joke Is Always On Us, Sometimes, and a notable number of songs on which Barbe sang lead. It’s my understanding that the Sugar fanbase always had a strong sense of affection for his lead vocals, but he simply doesn’t have the charisma that Bob Mould brings to his lead vocals.
That said, the show was 90 minutes of almost unabating power pop amplified to a near-excruciating degree. Every Sugar album has hooks in abundance, with pummeling volume and an immense sense of Mould’s vindictive, self-abnegating, or desperate pleas for connection and affection. It was unsurprising that the crowd reacted with the greatest sense of excitement to the singles from
Copper Blue, like “Hoover Dam,” and “A Good Idea”. But many of the b-sides and the tracks from
FU:EL also got a ripping response. (They actually did more b-sides and
Beaster tracks than they did from
FU:EL.) I particularly was enthralled by how they did “After All the Roads Have Led to Nowhere” and “Where Diamonds Are Halos."
While this was a band show, and Barbe had a good number of lead vocals, there is no doubt that this is Mould’s band. He ravaged the stage, running back and forth and shredding on the guitar when not yelling himself hoarse on lead vocals. It was a fierce display and an exhausting one merely to witness.
I was up almost at the front of the stage, technically one line of people from the divider to protect the band and the photographers in the pit. And it was
loud. As I have said before, one of the loudest shows I ever saw was Bob Mould at First Ave in Minneapolis, solo. The man likes volume. The sound was mostly good but the high whine of Mould’s guitar got painful after a time, and I bet the balance was better toward the middle or back of the audience.
There were three surprise guests on the final numbers: Patterson Hood, Craig Finn, and Jason Narducy. Hood absolutely ripped it up on
Beaster’s “JC Auto” but I was a bit disappointed honestly by Craig Finn’s lead vocals on “Helpless” especially since he seemed to be reading the lyrics off a sheet. I’m also just not much of a fan of the Hold Steady. Narducy, whom I’ve seen play with Mould before, was fine on his performance of “If I Can’t Change Your Mind,” but it did cost the show a bit in terms of momentum to see Mould turn over the microphone to guests in what would otherwise be the big-finish encore. I think Hood/Finn/Narducy were there largely as devoted fans and admirers, but also to spare Bob Mould's vocal cords a bit — three nights of this kind of performance would risk shredding anyone’s throat, especially someone in his 60s like Mould. I think this also explains the surprising number of Barbe’s songs in the set.
The set was pure Sugar: no Hüsker Dü material, no solo Mould, and no covers (that meant no “Armenia City in the Sky”). Despite the substantial set, the show went by in a ninety minute blur, a blistering pace with barely any between-set banter, except when Mould introduced his guests and thanked the audience for sticking with him for so long.
A few of the songs I wish I had heard: “Needle Hits E,” “Changes,” “The Slick,” “Man on the Moon,” “Believe What You’re Saying …” wow, Sugar had a lot of great songs for such a brief discography.
Full setlist:
Sugar Concert Setlist at Webster Hall, New York on May 4, 2026
In the audience I noted that lots of people seem to have come from DC, or Philly, or even flown in when this NY and London were only shows listed. I was next to folks who came up from the DC suburbs, and others (like me) who alluded to scheduling work trips around the show.
This was one of the best nights for t-shirts I’ve ever had. I guess if you’re attending a reunion tour of a 90s rock band, it’s your excuse to break out your collection of concert t-shirts. Here are a few I noticed:
Bangles
David Byrne
Bikini Kill
Sugar x many
Mould x 3
Hüsker Dü
Tori Amos (OK, that was me)
Marah
Social Distortion x 2
Shonen Knife
Nirvana x 4
Circle Jerks
ZZ Top
Voxtrot
Marty Stuart
The Clash
New Order x 2
Amy Rigby (not a shirt, an awesome tote bag)
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/10/2026 05:10AM by zwirnm.
