Sugarland, sugary hits

[August Brown doesn't want to guest blog if you don't want to guest blog.]

If nothing else comes out of this weekend, I finally understand Sugarland now. The band's chipper country-pop never seemed to have legs outside the usual CMT retinue, and the duo of Jennifer Nettles and Kristian Bush didn't exactly radiate boisterous charisma or roughshod authenticity.

But taken as a pure pop band shooting for summertime fun, the duo's upbeat romps through a teenagedom full of drinking by rivers and figuring out the right time to smooch was just what the afternoon called for. "County Line" is one of those universal coming-of-age-and-misbehaving numbers that actual teenagers have lapped up for decades, full of the same detailed-yet-accessible imagery of driving too fast and dodging cops that anyone who's ever been 16 can get behind. Especially sloshed early-twentysomething ladies having a girls'-only weekend. They loved this band.

"Want To" flips the occasion, where a young couple is tentatively navigating the line between kissing and being rejected, and the band backs it up with a cheerfully expert swagger that perfectly suited the occasion. Nettles was a firebrand on stage, and call me crazy, but it didn't seem wrong that they had today's Arcade Fire late-afternoon-anthem set time.