The Comedy of Errors: Sugartime - Awestruck (23 May 1992)

Buy this at Discogs

“On this show we generally apply a blanket ban on records which feature bands going ‘la-la-la-la’, but that one appears to have slipped through the net.” - John Peel after playing Awestruck on 23/5/92.

Sugartime were a short-lived side-project/supergroup which brought together members of various noise rock groups such as Live Skull and Nice Strong Arm.  Their highest profile member was Swans
guitarist, Norman Westberg.

Awestruck sits in a kind of pop-grunge middle ground with those aforementioned “la-la-la”s being encircled by catchily, scrunchy riffs.  The lyrics are pure In the Realm of the Senses with the subjects of the song locking themselves away and losing themselves in carnal pleasure - the busily insistent, single guitar note at the start of the track coming on like a headboard smacking against the wall.  It does a superb job of capturing the wonder and delight of burgeoning sexual experience and a sense of being the only two people in the world who are doing it.  That phase where sexual experimentation becomes all-consuming both in thought, action and time.

“We lock ourselves up in your room and never leave.
Of all the things we do, your friends cannot conceive.
You have a special way of trying to unwind.
You match your woman’s body with a normal mind”.

Being that this is an early 90s US underground rock song, and its authors are leaving everything out there, the lyrics take an excursion into mutual sadism in the final verse, but the sense of exhilaration remains undimmed.  And on that note of ecstasy, Sugartime was laid to rest.

Video courtesy of Jon Boucher
All lyrics are copyright of their authors.