Album A Day: Sugarcult – Start Static

Artist: Sugarcult
Album: Start Static
Release Date: August 21, 2001

If you’ve followed VLM and the Album A Day series, you’ve probably encountered a running theme in the albums I enjoy. Not everything has to be a complex, multilayered classic on the level of OK Computer or Dark Side of the Moon. Sometimes all an album needs is an overdose of energy and some simple, fun lyrics and riffs. Sugarcult’s Start Static is a textbook example of this fact. It’s sugary, largely safe pop-punk from a short-lived era where that kind of thing was accepted. It’s definitely got the loud part down fairly well, as evidenced by hit single “Bouncing Off The Walls”, the hooks and choruses are as catchy and simple as anyone in the genre can make them, and even in light of the apparent simplicity of the music, Sugarcult never really settle for the lowest common denominator. At the very least, they try for the teeniest bit of thought and effort both lyrically and musically. It doesn’t always work, and the second half of the album feels a bit forced, but still a hell of a lot better than a significant number of Sugarcult’s contemporaries (and the band’s later work, for that matter). It didn’t (and likely won’t) win any awards, but no one ever accused Sugarcult of trying to do anything other than what they do so adeptly here.

Sugarcult – Bouncing off the Walls [iTunes] (YSI)

==TJ==

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• Damn the Static