It's a penny! Well, that's a reason alone to buy this album, but that's beside the point. It's a good pop album with catchy songs from Bob Mould and his 90's band. Songs "Gee Angel", "Favorite Thing", "I Can't Help You Anymore", and the rest of the album are all solid rocking pop songs. If you like Husker Du or Mould's solo stuff and you don't own this. I don't know why. Get it.

Between solo albums, Bob Mould made a trilogy under the name Sugar (not counting the extra disc of B sides). "File Under Easy Listening" is the third, and you can tell. It's more polished than the previous albums, but it has less energy. He's finally figured out how to write and record great rock songs, but he's gotten bored with the whole process.

When he's on, he's really on. Bob Mould is able to turn distortion and feedback into melody with so little effort, you don't always notice what he's doing. The first track, Gift, is full of blistering guitar solos, but it's as catchy as the Beatles.

The rest of the album follows the same pattern, turning guitar tones into perfect pop songs. Mould has a knack for writing back-biting lyrics, too, reflecting on burnt-out relationships and betrayal. He sings sweetly, but you can tell he's not happy.

If every song was as good as Panama City Hotel, Granny Cool, and Gee Angel, this would be a five-star album. But too many songs are based on a single hook . . . and too many are played on acoustic guitar.

Like his fellow songwriter from Minneapolis, Paul Westerberg, Bob Mould delivers less than he promises. Maybe some day he'll make that perfect rock album. Until then, this will have to do.

File Under Easy Listening is a rather fitting title, since some of these songs are very accesible. However, this CD is not solid straight through. You will find it a bit uneven for Sugar standards (say, the ever-exceptional Copper Blue).

Gift is a punchy opener. There is not a moment in the song that lets up on momentum. It really does serve the purpose for waking up the listener and making him or her pay attention. But then we arrive at Company Book, sung by Dave "I'm-shouting-into-a-bucket" Barbe. It's really fortunate that you can't hear him because the lyrics are not good. It's elementary preaching-to-the-choir rhetoric about how corporate bosses run everyone like sheep. A message that could have been stated more eloquently.

Your Favorite Thing is nice and vibrant, peppy; true punk-pop. But it's followed by the ever-mediocre What You Want It To Be. It's just a song with lots of distortion and repetition. Then it's GEE ANGEL! This is one of Sugar's best songs, with the energy behind it to convince you. The music is solid and Mould's vocal performance pulls its weight in this should-be power pop classic.

Panama City Hotel starts the second half. Now this is a song that lacks guts, and not because of its acoustic origin. It just whimps its way through to the last note. Can't Help You Anymore is another nice song that Mould wrote while avoiding his dark side (I guess he exocised most of it with 1993's Beaster) in the vein of Your Favorite Thing. Granny Cool comes up next, and I really like the message of this song: making fun of old people who try to be hip: "you look like such a fool/hey look it's granny cool!" I think that's pretty funny. But the vocals are melodyless and the guitars sound like sludge.

Can't Believe What You're Saying reinstates Bob's ability to write with the acoustic guitar. Although it does not succeed as a sequel to If I Can't Change Your Mind from Copper Blue, this is a pretty good song. It once again shows that Mould can be a tad cheery to his own devices. Explode and Make Up is probably FUEL's most sinister moment. What seems to be about personal spats is taken to a personal extremeties as Bob shouts "I hate you/explode and make up." So the CD concludes with a rather sobering impression, but that's Bob Mould for you! He has to get angry somewhere.

...

It's not as catchy as "Copper Blue". It's not as intelligent as "Beaster".

But is it good? Yes. Everything Bob Mould does is pretty good and at least worth a glance. I'd put this on the same level as Mould's self-titled album (released right after this). Good stuff. I'd look into (at least) "Copper Blue" and later Husker Du albums first, though.

No matter what he calls himself, Bob Mould pretty much sounds the same. Mould�s brand of sludgy hard rock seems to appeal to some, but I can�t imagine why. I mean sure he�s had OK tracks (not on this album though) but to me he seems more like a hack than an innovator.

"File Under Easy Listening" is a disappointment after the great Sugar debut, "Copper Blue." Signs were already apparant that leader Bob Mould was becoming bored with his latest power trio. "Believe What You're Saying" and "Your Favorite Thing" are two fine singles worthy of the first album, but the rest of the material just doesn't hold up. In fact, much of it sounds similar to the aural sludge Mould dredges up on the lesser tracks from his first two solo albums, "Workbook" and "Black Sheets of Rain." Mould can be a great songwriter, but only when he is fully engaged.

Unfortunately, Sugar's "File Under: Easy Listening" never matched the melodic, blustery guitar heights of Copper Blue, a masterful album that may represent the apex of Bob Mould's career. Still, there are noteworthy moments on the band's second full-length album, one of which is the opening song, "Gift." If you loved Sugar then you'll probably love "Gift." Comprised of hard, tight, wall-of sound guitar work that explodes right away, the song is a great way to lead off the album. Mould's voice is in fine multi-tracked form, a smooth and direct current amid the wailing guitar that surround it.

My second favorite song on this disc is the perky "Gee Angel," which features a killer riff and terrific drumming by Malcolm Travis, who could really light it up behind his kit on fast songs. In similar fashion, "Granny Cool" boasts a beefy riff and, once again, swirling background guitar that made Sugar so distinctive and rockin'.

Elsewhere on the CD, Mould traded his heavy, layered brand of rock and roll for sweetly melodic mid-tempo tunes with way less gusto. "Believe What You're Saying" and the harder "Your Favorite Thing" were released as singles and seemed to be Mould's attempt to cross over to a more radio-ready format. A better song to release to radio, in my opinion, would have been the pleasantly lulling "Panama City Hotel," which features sparkling acoustic guitar work that belies the drab surroundings Mould sings about in an almost storylike way. Also good is the final song, "Explode and Make Up," a tugging, heart-on-his-sleeve ditty where Mould exits with class and a statement.

This is a sprightly album that has always sounded good to me -- and probably better and better as the years go by -- but being the successor to "Copper Blue" made it a hard act to follow. I used to regard "File Under" as a slightly generic listening experience, but it's transformed in my eyes into a solid rock and roll album by a great band. Mould has gone on to do great solo work, but his years with Sugar were always my favorite time of his career.

Very solid, hard rocking, but not unsubtle cd. Gee Angel is a great song. If you can't crank this song in your car, you should just stick to Geritol and AM radio. Mould's second best song, next to HD's "Don't want to know if you are lonely"

F.U.E.L. is playing as I'm typing this. Anyways, this CD is almost as good as the previous release ("Copper Blue"). More of the same crunchy, catchy, power pop-driven melodies! Sugar broke up, right? Such a shame. The band should've gotten more attention. Best tracks: "Your Favorite Thing", "What You Want It To Be", "Gee Angel", "Can't Help You Anymore". Now I'm SERIOUSLY thinking of buying some of Bob's solo stuff...

Actually, one thing that makes this album different from Copper Blue is David Barbe taking lead vocals on a few songs. "Favorite Thing", "Gee Angel", and "Believe What You're Saying" are Sugar's homerun hitters but the list is longer than that! This album is an amazing follow up to "copper" and some people tell me they even like it more. For me, they're so similar that they should just make it a CD double from now on. Inevitibly, If you by one, it won' be long before you by the other!

The great thing about Husker Du was the balance between Bob Mould's frequently furious songs and Grant Hart's more accessible pop sensibility.

Here, of course, it's all Bob Mould, and therefore the songs start sounding very indistinguishable from one another. There are only a few stand-out tracks, like "Believe What You're Saying." The others just get weighted down in the white-noise-guitar-wash production.