Bob Mould
The NATN Pantheon
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Hüsker Dü- Zen Arcade (1984)
Hüsker Dü- New Day Rising (1985)
Sugar- Copper Blue (1992)
Sugar- File Under: Easy Listening (1994)
Recommended
Hüsker Dü- Metal Circus EP (1983)
Hüsker Dü- Flip Your Wig (1985)
Bob Mould (1996)
Body of Song (2005)
Worth Hearing
Hüsker Dü- Everything Falls Apart and More (1982)
Hüsker Dü- Warehouse: Songs and Stories (1987)
Workbook (1989)
Sugar- Beaster EP (1993)
Hüsker Dü- The Living End (1994)
Sugar- Besides (1995)
The Last Dog and Pony Show (1998)
Obsessives Only
Hüsker Dü- Land Speed Record (1981)
Hüsker Dü- Candy Apple Grey (1986)
Black Sheets of Rain (1990)
Modulate (2002)
Land Speed Record, Hüsker Dü's first recorded assault on an unsuspecting world, proceeds with all of the subtlety of a snuff film, only with lesser production values. When reissued on CD, the live 1981 mini-LP appropriately was given no division between songs, with each full vinyl side receiving one track. Without a pause between songs or a word to the audience, the trio crushes heads with 17 tunes in well under half an hour. There simply isn't enough time for considered arrangements, coherent lyrics, or even melodies in these songs, unless you count Greg Norton's insane quadruple-time bass solos. Yet if you strain, you can hear the blueprint being laid out for the long career of the indie/alternative era's most inspirational, confounding, surprising, and influential voice.
I couldn't tell you exactly which Land Speed Record track with which to begin -- indeed, it's pretty difficult to distinguish any one tune from Land Speed from any other, except for the cover of the "Gilligan's Island" theme - but the contradiction inherent in these sloppy hardcore broadsides has defined Bob Mould since day one. Mould is an intensely private person whose music is almost always messily emotional; Mould is an unflaggingly dour lyricist whose bleak songs never fail to uplift; Mould is a violent, almost martial guitarist whose every jagged chord is the sound of pure joy. When he finds his sweet spot, as he did first with Hüsker Dü in the 80's and then again with Sugar in the mid-90's, Bob Mould has been responsible for some of the best rock music ever made, period. Yet he's never made a truly great record under his own name, and his career is pockmarked with long recurring periods of creative drift, self-imposed silence, and cripplingly stupid decision-making. Being a Bob Mould fan can seem more trouble than it's worth from time to time. But Mould himself has never even for a moment bowed to other people's expectations. Not to say the guy hates his listeners or anything (although the untimely breakup of Sugar and some of the songs on Bob Mould make you wonder), but from Land Speed Record on, Bob Mould has made music for himself first and foremost. It's a necessary survival mechanism for him, and an understanding of this helps to explain (if not to fully forgive) the many missed chances and ill-advised stylistic shifts of his now nearly 30-year career.
While the early 80's gave rise to thousands of hardcore bands in places even more far-flung than Minneapolis, none transcended their fast/loud origins to a greater degree than Hüsker Dü. Singer/guitarist Mould started the band with Norton and drummer/singer Grant Hart and that would remain the lineup until they called it quits in 1987. A more mismatched trio you would be hard-pressed to find: a seafood chef with a handlebar moustache, a long-haired hippie with a penchant for muscle shirts, and a heavyset, soft-spoken guitar god with a round-cheeked baby face. But that was what hardcore was all about, man, people of different races and backgrounds coming together to blow eardrums and stick it to the man. Unfortunately, hardcore as a musical movement had everything going for it except for the actual music; by the time Hüsker Dü realized its full potential virtually every other significant hardcore band of the period from 1980-83 had either broken up or lost so many original members that they might as well have. Everything Falls Apart and More, which combines the Hüsker's first full-length with a clutch of early singles, is a better-recorded though less giddily efficient way of sampling the band's developmental period as compared to Land Speed Record. Even at this point they were beginning to tire of rigid hardcore conventions; Mould's "In a Free Land" boasts catchy call-and-response vocals and Hart's "Statues" is a nine-minute psychedelic jam. Most of the overlong disc's songs though are bludgeonings along the lines of "Target," "Blah, Blah, Blah," and a reprise of Land Speed's gnashing "Bricklayer."
Metal Circus, despite the title, was Hüsker Dü's most accessible release to date. Slowing down their tempos slightly made all the difference in the world, as the musicality of Hart's drumming and the sheer mass of Mould's guitar were finally evident in the mix. Shouting began to give way to singing, and with hardcore bands all around the nation biting the dust before making second albums, delicate melodies suddenly didn't seem so far beyond the pale. Hart led the way with the harmony-laden "Diane" and the anthemic "It's Not Funny Anymore." Mould would soon catch up with his rival in terms of bringing the hooks, but for this record his best songs saw him perfecting his ability to personify pure unchecked rage, as on "Deadly Skies" and "Lifeline." Going straight from Everything Falls Apart to Zen Arcade would have been superhuman; that the Hüskers negotiated the divide with only a brief seven-song EP as bridge is pretty darned impressive too.
Quite possibly the best album made in the 1980's, Zen Arcade was one of the founding records of the genre eventually dubbed "indie rock" and a massive challenge to every other band in the underground. The Minutemen's Double Nickels on the Dime, released later the same year with the message "Take that, Hüskers!" printed prominently on its sleeve, could have never happened without its example. Embracing a multitude of new sounds while not for a minute turning its back on Hüsker Dü's raging original principles, Zen Arcade was proof positive that independent bands could create work every bit as timeless and resonant as their better-funded counterparts in the mainstream. Mould's fervent guitar playing reached a new level on tunes like "Chartered Trips" and the almost speed-metal "Indecision Time." Now that you could finally understand what he was saying much of the time, he turned out to be a brilliant lyricist as well. Kind of a 75% concept album, Arcade has a running theme of disillusioned youth leaving home in search of greater freedom and finding no good answers in the somnolent atmosphere of Ronald Reagan's America. In addition to Hart's acoustic "Never Talking to You Again" the album also departed from tradition with backwards tracks, solo piano instrumentals, peculiar percussion, and a lengthy, grinding closing jam. Despite all of this experimentation, most of the basic tracks on Zen Arcade were recorded in a single take! That was the second pillar of the indie manifesto laid down by Arcade. Not only were independent bands fully capable of producing music of equal scale and import to the big boys, but they could do it on their own terms, with none of the excesses and wastefulness endemic to corporate rock.
New Day Rising, released less than a year after the double-LP Zen Arcade, is only slightly less fondly remembered, and then so only because it came second. There's less experimentation and more focus on songwriting, with Mould and Hart each toying with their established roles. Mould's "I Apologize" is every bit as strong melodically as anything Grant Hart ever wrote and would provide a template, years later, when Mould got Sugar together. Hart's "The Girl Who Lives on Heaven Hill" is an absolute rager. Like most Hüsker records, Mould gets slightly more than half of the songwriting credits on New Day Rising. The record's major weakness is that releasing three records' worth of music in less than a calendar year forced Mould to scrape the bottom of the barrel a bit to complete Rising. However, emboldened by the success of his departures from script on Zen Arcade, Grant Hart burst out with the best set of songs he ever wrote, including the piano-pounding "Books About UFOs" and the supercharged doo-wop "Terms of Psychic Warfare." Hüsker Dü wasn't about either just Bob Mould or Grant Hart, so any reasonable record collection requires copies of both Zen Arcade (Mould's best album) and New Day (Hart's).
Flip Your Wig, which amazingly came out in the same calendar year as New Day Rising, features much better production than the quick and dirty first two albums Hüsker Dü made for SST. Unfortunately it did not feature anywhere near as many great songs. It's hardly disposable, with Mould's "Find Me" and Hart's "Keep Hanging On" the highlights, but it probably wasn't such a good idea to completely empty the cupboard immediately before signing to a major label. Candy Apple Grey is by far Hüsker Dü's least interesting record, although Hart's multiple attempts at hit single writing are sort of curious and "Hardly Getting Over It" for better or for worse marks the debut appearance of the signature power ballad style Mould has gone to over and over again on his solo records and (less frequently) with Sugar. Still, it's a very, very bad sign when the best song on the album is the obligatory studio goof tune ("Eiffel Tower High"). Warehouse: Songs and Stories contains more good songs simply because it contains more songs; with lots of far-out moves it tries to recapture the spirit of Zen Arcade but it lacks both the unifying theme and the roaring force of a band just finding its voice. The rigid division of songwriting credits on the two major label albums (Hart songs are suddenly 1:1 with Mould songs, and more often than not they simply alternate, I sing one, you sing one, and so on) ought to be a dead giveaway that camaraderie in the group was not at an all-time high. That was indeed the case, with Hart cultivating a drug habit and Mould losing interest in loud rock and roll. They broke up, and it wasn't until years later that the live album The Living End closed the book on the story. Besides the incoherent Land Speed Record it's the only live Hüsker Dü album there is, so if you're interested you'll just have to cope with a high percentage of late-period material and so-so recording quality.
Bob Mould began his solo career with high hopes, signing to Virgin and producing a debut, Workbook, that had plenty of radio potential, sounding almost adult contempory at times. Neither of the records from Mould's first solo period has aged very well, but Workbook is the better set of songs. There are some weak and repetitive lyrics and Mould goes overboard trying to avoid comparisons to Hüsker Dü - just one or two rockers on here would help the overall flow a lot - but unlike his former bandmate Hart he didn't immediately prove he wasn't capable of cultivating interesting music post- Hüskers. Workbook's modestly successful sales figures having apparently proved his point, Mould tried to go back to rocking out on Black Sheets of Rain, but he had both the wrong band and the wrong set of songs for accomplishing that goal. As a consequence, you still see copy after copy of Black Sheets sitting sadly in cut-out bins to this day. "It's Too Late" is probably worth five bucks, if you see it.
So what next? Souring on the major label game, this time for good, Mould put together a new backing band of drummer Malcolm Travis and bassist David Barbe and started shopping for an indie. The new guys were amazing players, particularly the simply relentless Travis, and Mould recognized their contributions to a new more streamlined but blissfully noisy kind of Bob Mould music by giving the new group a band name, Sugar. Their first recordings yielded enough material for a full-length, Copper Blue, and the EP Beaster. It's important to realize that all of the songs from these two releases were recorded at the same time and Mould made a conscious choice to assemble the music in this fashion. Otherwise, the Sugar of the first album and the Sugar of Beaster seem like two different bands.
Copper Blue is utterly confident modern rock, bursting with a higher concentration of good songs than any Mould project since Flip Your Wig. The Travis/Barbe rhythm section is so completely qualitatively different than Hart/Norton that Mould seems to relax for the first time in years. The result was the biggest commercial success of his career. "Helpless" and "If I Can't Change Your Mind" flawlessly brought Mould's songwriting roaring into the alternative rock era. The rest of the record makes up for one of the disappointing aspects of Mould's early career, that he never seemed to have great songs and a good producer on hand at the same time, with synthesizers, state-of-the-art effects, and the ultimate perfection of Mould's hence trademark super-multitracked lead vocal sound. Throughout, Mould seems tremendously invigorated by all of the successful early 90's indie bands who themselves were hugely influenced by Hüsker Dü. Copper Blue's biggest flaw, really, is a few tracks that too enthusiastically pay tribute to the styles of new Mould acolytes. Doing homages as blatant as "A Good Idea" (Pixies) and "Man on the Moon" (My Bloody Valentine) is beneath an artist of Bob Mould's stature.
Beaster is a weird, dark little record with a couple of longish songs and far less melody than Copper Blue. "JC Auto" is a thrashy treat and "Feeling Better" nicely introduces a later ruinous Mould interest in dance music; what's left is atmospherics and tunes that don't have enough ideas in them to justify their lengths.
File Under: Easy Listening, if you can accept the idea that it's just a set of really good songs and not at all sprawling or epic, might be Mould's single greatest statement to date. Mould's new mastery of the pop territory once Grant Hart's domain in Hüsker Dü is impressive. "Gee Angel" and "Your Favorite Thing" and "What You Want It to Be" move with uncharacteristic ease. "Gift" is just a massive guitar assault. "Granny Cool" showcases Mould's humor, "Panama City Motel" his storytelling, "Explode and Make Up" his direct and undeniable response to heartache. FU:EL is such a confident and consistent record that even David Barbe's song "Company Book" grows on you after a while. This one is definitely worth it if you see it in the cutout bin.
So why did File Under: Easy Listening flop? It's hard to say, because its singles were easily the equal of Copper Blue's. Part of the answer might have to do with another change of heart from Mould. After engaging himself fully in the business of selling records when Sugar formed, his reward for a job well done was an embarrassing forced outing. The fact that Bob Mould is gay has absolutely no bearing on his music career. I was kind of hoping to write this whole piece without mentioning it, because Mould has made it abundantly clear through the years that he much prefers to keep his personal life, well, personal. Certain forces in the gay community tried to piggyback off of his fame to serve their own agenda after Copper Blue briefly made Mould an MTV star; the whole ordeal seemed to sour the Sugar experience for the musician and File Under's disappointing sales only put the nails in the coffin. Besides, the obligatory posthumous rarities compilation, comes in two versions. The first, a limited-edition two-disc set with an absolutely blistering entire live show included as a bonus, is worth whatever you might have to pay for it. The single-disc version has the usual potpourri of fair-to-middling non-album stuff, cool covers ("Armenia City in the Sky"), live tracks, and useless remixes.
Mould started his second solo career on the wrong foot again. Bob Mould reverses course from the mainly cheery File Under: Easy Listening with some of the most overtly miserable lyrics the man has ever composed; "Thumbtack" in particular is absolutely gut-wrenching. The melodies are there as well, in just as strong a concentration as the Sugar albums. However, Mould made one of the dumbest mistakes of his career in deciding to play every note on this record completely by himself, with no rhythm section. Like many truly great guitarists, Mould seemingly can't play bass to save his life, and the plodding drum machine tracks on Bob Mould (also known as "the hubcap record" due to its cover photograph of, um, a hubcap) make the whole affair drag where it ought to drive. If these songs had been on the third Sugar LP instead of the third Bob Mould solo album, history might have turned out very differently. I still long desperately for any sort of official live recording with tunes like "Fort Knox, King Solomon" and "Deep Karma Canyon" performed by a proper power trio. I'm still waiting. At the time of the release of The Last Dog and Pony Show, Mould announced he was "done" with rock music, which at the very least provided him with the impetus to hire a drummer for his farewell tour. Unfortunately the band from Dog and Pony doesn't get the songs from Bob Mould but rather a much weaker new group. "Classifieds" and the Workbook-like "Along the Way" are nice tunes but the remainder are at best Mould coasting.
It took all of one album, Modulate, to get Bob to recant the "no more rock" thing. Well, he's a moody guy, these things happen. I would tell you some more things about Modulate but honestly I can't bear to listen to it ever again. Buy it yourself if you want. You don't really need to, because Mould gracefully applied the few useful things he learned from that ghastly all-electro affair to some of the songs from Body of Song, his most eclectic and disorganized set since Warehouse: Songs and Stories. I can take or leave the vocoder parts on Body's dance-inflected numbers, but while the album is sloppily sequenced at least it has a quorum of good songs and a drummer, Fugazi's Brendan Canty, who is worthy of filling the seat behind Mould. "Gauze of Friendship" is his best tearjerker since "Explode and Make Up" and I've never heard Mould sing anything quite like the lovely 60's-style ballad "High Fidelity."
There is no evidence to suggest that Bob Mould will ever create a triumph on the level of Zen Arcade or File Under: Easy Listening again, but by the same token there is nothing to suggest that he won't, either. Based on Black Sheets of Rain his comeback with Sugar was nothing short of a miracle; based on Modulate the fact that Body of Song ended up one of his better solo albums is a pretty good shock itself. Bob Mould still has the power to surprise us, even this far into his career.
MARK T.R. DONOHUE | Mark T.R. Donohue is a prolific freelance writer whose areas of expertise include Rockies baseball, video games, genre television, English soccer, and pub rock. He lives in Colorado, where he cultivates the largest and creepiest private collection of Alyson Hannigan memorabilia in the Mountain West.