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Rarely do I go out to shows on a Sunday night, but Sugarcult were in town, opening for Unwritten Law. I missed Sugarcult at the Warped punk Festival last year, which I came to regret given how hard I fell for their album Start Static, and I wasn’t going to make the same mistake again. So I called my neighbour Paul, who happens, by fortunate coincidence, to be about my age, from the UK, married to an American, and with a sole son; being from multi-culti Bristol, he grew up on ska, reggae, punk and funk which means, all told, we have plenty in common. He was happy to join me on a drive into Manhattan, to Irving Plaza of all places.

I could feel a theme coming on here. Apart from wanting to see Sugarcult for the pure hell of it, I was keen to see how I could compare them to my experience at the same venue on Friday night. The average age at Warped is probably about 15; it turned out to be only a year or two older at Irving. New York may be hurting financially, but the kids are finding money for their gigs, that’s for sure.

Tim Pagnotta: Elvis Costello fan, Billy Joe lookalike, and fond of the 'f' word: "You guys are the fuckin' best."

There were certain similarities to Mayer. When the lights went down around 8.45pm, the screams - of all things - came up, and when Sugarcult ran onstage, it was obvious why. They ooze sex appeal. Actually, they don’t. But singer-guitarist Tim Pagnotta is hot, in a Billy Joe-from-Green Day kind of way, and punk fans are hardly spoiled for choice. They commenced with Start Static's opener, ‘You’re The One’ and my pal Paul was most impressed, noting how Sugarcult have that late 70s Buzzcocks-Vibrators look down to a tee; I even thought I could see a Vibrators button badge on lead guitarist Marko 72’s shirt. (I was right; I could.)

Then the second song opened with the line “I don’t want to kiss you, I don’t want to touch,” and it was obvious Sugarcult were doing more than paying lip service to that era. I clocked the cover before Paul (I should do, I earn my living listening to music). It was Elvis Costello’s ‘No Action,’ the opening song from his monumental second album This Year’s Model. The audience didn’t scream their recognition or sing along as they had ‘You’re The One,’ but hey, what a song. What an inspired choice of cover tune. What a wonderful education for the crowd. What a totally cool band.

I constantly feel like I need to apologise for loving a band like Sugarcult. (I put them in my top 10 albums for the year, then felt the need to say later they were a 'throwaway' vote as if I felt guilty.) They’re not original musically, they’re not saying anything new lyrically, they’re not the best musicians you’ve ever heard or the greatest singers. You can’t even excuse them by allowing that they’re teenagers. (Pagnotta is 24; Marko 72, allowing that he’s run a couple of indie labels, might well have been born the year of his name.) But the thing is, they know all of this - unlike John Mayer, who seems to think he’s breaking new ground - and that clears the decks to love them for their sheer exuberance.

Sugarcult are pissed at the world - most of the songs are about suburban alienation or romantic disasters - but they don’t ask you to destroy. They just allow to have a good time venting all your energy (or to grin madly, like Paul and I, if you don’t have much energy on a Sunday night to vent), and to find them afterwards if you want to know more or just hang out. It’s not rocket science. Pagnotta’s typical rant went something like this: “Fuckin’ A . . . I think New York City’s the fucking’ greatest place in the world . . . can we stay up here all fuckin’ night?. . .Can you show us round town?. . . you guys are the fuckin’ best.’” And you knew he meant every word of it.

On top of which, it has to be emphasised in bold letters, Sugarcult write great songs. Prime among them is the album’s first single ‘Stuck In America,’ on which I noticed the vocals had reverted to their original “blowing up the neighborhood” line; I also noted that the group draped one of the amps with the Stars & Stripes, as if pre-compensating for the negative connotations of that otherwise great song. ‘Pretty Girl,’ ‘Daddy’s Little Defect,’ 'How Does It Feel,’ ‘Bouncing Off The Walls,’ they’re minor classics, every one of them, and given the current state of American rock - the Linkin Parks and Stainds and Slipknots of this world - I’m thrilled to discover they’re getting played on the radio. Sugarcult will never break big like Green Day once did - it doesn’t feel like the right time for it and the more conventionally hardcore Unwritten Law clearly pulled the majority of the crowd this night - but the fact that they’ve got the teenage following down proves I’m not just being nostalgic here. And unlike the John Mayer crowd (where frat boys threw womens bras and condom balloons on stage) the kids here were alright. They weren’t out to get drunk, and they weren’t out to pick each other up, apart from off the floor when they got over excited. They just wanted to have some fun listening to a band they could identify with.

Late in the set, Marko stepped to the microphone to state how he knew that “New York had a real shitty year, like the whole country did....and it was extra shitty because Joey Ramone died,” at which they launched into ‘I Wanna Be Sedated.’ The room exploded. Afterwards, Paul and I cornered Marko and noted that most of the audience hadn’t been born when that song came out. He replied they probably hadn’t been born when the Ramones broke up! As for covering Elvis, he explained, it was to lead the audience back to some of this music’s roots. “They ask us who it’s by, and when we tell them, they’re like, ‘I thought Elvis was just a singer songwriter.’”

Well, there you go. Elvis Costello was so much more than that, and the new crop of American singer-songwriters would do well to remember as much if they hope to be getting viewed on video or covered onstage twenty to twenty-five years from now. But it’s alright. The depression that John Mayer left me with on Friday - that this is what college kids listen to - was relieved on Sunday by the exhileration of Sugarcult. If this is what high school kids are listening to, everything’s cool.

TONY FLETCHER, FEBRUARY 26 2002

(You can dowload Sugarcult’s cover of ‘No Action', and three songs off Start Static for free at this link from their web site: Hold your mouse-click down to save the file to your hard drive.)