Dead Confederate have sweetened the pot. This summer, Georgia’s formidable indie rockers followed their remarkable downer debut, “Wrecking Ball,” with the noticeably lighter, brighter, and, um, sweeter “Sugar.” This is comparatively speaking, of course. Total rock candy a la Def Leppard, this isn’t.
“Yeah, it has moments that aren’t as drab,” agrees singer Hardy Morris, his fine Southern manners hardly overselling either album.
“The last record has the same vibe across the whole thing. This one, we’d just written a whole bunch of songs, we picked the ones we liked the best. At first, we were a little reluctant to put some on the record because they were so different. But in the end, we thought, ‘It’s our band, it’s our record, let’s just put what we like on there.’”
Quite right too; after all, second-guessing can lead to the sophomore slump, a jinx to which many bands who enjoy initial success succumb. Dead Confederate, however, kept the faith and followed their gut.
“We could have easily done another album similar to ‘Wrecking Ball,’ but I don’t think that would have been very rewarding. Whether people love ‘Sugar’ or not, I don’t think anybody can say we did the same thing or didn’t make an interesting album.”
