Despite their repeated appearances on the Warped Tour (they'll be back again this year), performing with the likes of Simple Plan and Good Charlotte, and their catchy, guitar-driven tunes, Sugarcult doesn't want to be categorized as a pop-punk band. "I've always thought that if I was into pop-punk, and I got one of our records, I'd be really disappointed," says front man and songwriter Tim Pagnotta.
Although he cites The Clash, the Ramones and Elvis Costello as influences, Pagnotta's songs sound just as informed by the big, catchy arena-rock sounds of bands like Cheap Trick and even Journey. Like other bands often mischaracterized as pop-punk or emo—The Stereo, American Hi-Fi, Weezer—Sugarcult has a classic-rock soul, and songs ready-made for fist-pumping and lighter-flicking.
Pagnotta doesn't quite see it that way, though. "I don't know," he says warily after I suggest that there's an arena-rock band just under the surface of Sugarcult's music. While he admits that "Back to California," from the band's forthcoming second album, Palm Trees and Power Lines, could be considered "power ballad-y," he won't quite cop to the comparison. "I like pop music, and I like catchy songs," he says. "But when I think of power ballads, I think of Guns N' Roses."
But it doesn't really matter how you categorize Sugarcult's music: the fact remains that it's insanely catchy, energetic rock with its heart on its sleeve, and if Pagnotta doesn't want to embrace his inner Steve Perry, it's forgivable.
He acknowledges that people will draw their own conclusions about the band, anyway. "I know some people get really upset if they're called a pop-punk band because they think somehow it strips them of their credibility or makes them less valid," he says. "I don't really worry about that kind of stuff. People can call us whatever kind of band they want."
Whatever kind of music you want to call it, Sugarcult's songs have hit a chord with audiences, scoring at radio and MTV2, all without major-label support. They've essentially toured non-stop for the last three years, and a new record means another round of dates this spring, followed by another summer on Warped. It's an uphill battle: Pagnotta's struggling with tinnitus from the relentless tour schedule, and getting your single played on radio isn't easy when there isn't a corporate behemoth backing you up. Pagnotta has definitely gotten a crash-course in music biz politics in the last few years. "One of my favorite movies is that movie That Thing You Do," he says. "What's so fun about that movie is that the band gets popular in a really organic way. It's supply and demand. The band has the song and the fans demand it on the radio. So I just assumed a little bit of that is true, and then I was quickly disheartened of that." He tells of fixed "top-request" shows, labels that use bigger acts to push smaller acts, and the general corruption in radio. At the same time, he notes that "there's other things more important than radio singles."
For Sugarcult, those things are the fans they cultivate through their non-stop touring, and the personal, heartfelt songs Pagnotta puts to record. "I kind of get inspired and write songs about things that swing me emotionally," he says. "If I go to a fair and have a lollipop and cotton candy, I tend not to be moved to write songs about that."
From that personal starting point, the songs can sometimes lose their meaning played hundreds of times at hundreds of shows, but it's the fans who bring it back for Pagnotta. "Lots of times, emotional songs mean much more emotionally to other people than they do to yourself, which is an interesting concept," he says. "I can play a song, and sure, it meant something to me and it embodied a spirit of a moment or a feeling or something that resonated with me and I was inspired enough to write a song about it. But someone that was either going through something similar to that, or can really relate to that in some parallel way, they may have experienced that emotion or that situation much stronger than I ever did, but somehow it can relate to them."
Isn't that what the best arena rock is about, anyway? The universal truths of heartache and longing, expressed with a kick-ass melody and some bitchin' guitar work? Isn't that what Cheap Trick and Journey were all about? Maybe Sugarcult hasn't quite gotten to its live at Budokan moment yet, and maybe the only lighters flicked at their gigs are used for cigarettes, but the band has touched plenty of small-town girls living in lonely worlds, and as long as they don't stop believin', they'll get there soon.