On Thursday, Aug. 15, the Bob Mould Band will totally rock the roof off the Englert in support of the singer-guitarist’s superb 2012 release, Silver Age. This is reason enough to be super-psyched, but wait, there’s more! Mould has been mining his deep back catalog—performing songs by Hüsker Dü and Sugar, his two previous bands, as well as tracks from his substantial solo discography. This breadth of material is intimidating even for a hardcore fan, so I submit to you, dear reader, a comprehensive career overview in just 1,000 words.
Phase One: Hüsker Dü
Bob Mould’s first band helped create the blueprint for what came to be known as “alternative rock.” Fuzzed-out guitars? Check. Howling vocals and caffeinated rhythms? Double check. Gorgeous melodies? Triple check. That combination of ingredients made this Minneapolis trio one of the most influential bands in the 1980s American post-punk scene. However, you wouldn’t necessarily know that from listening to Hüsker Dü’s first two releases: Land Speed Record, a live album from 1982, and their 1983 studio debut, Everything Falls Apart. With few exceptions, the group adheres to the loud-fast-short template of hardcore punk and breaks little new ground.
It wasn’t until Hüsker Dü’s transitional EP Metal Circus that they showed their first signs of greatness, particularly on Mould’s songs “Real World” and “First of the Last Calls.” Then came Zen Arcade, a 1984 double album that mixed short, catchy punk-infused songs with acoustic tracks and extended bouts of psychedelia. A 14-minute-long song, “Reoccurring Dreams,” closes this concept album—which was a radical move at a time when punk bands treated concept albums, and double albums, like kryptonite. Nearly three decades after its release, Zen Arcade still holds up as one of the best and most ambitious albums of that decade.
Hüsker Dü truly hit its stride when it released two landmark albums in 1985, New Day Rising and Flip Your Wig. Their perfect pop melodies sugarcoated Mould’s bitter lyrical angst and raging guitars. It doesn’t get much better than “I Apologize,” “Celebrated Summer,” “Flip Your Wig,” “Makes No Sense at All” and “Hate Paper Doll.” Their covers of the Byrds’ “Eight Miles High” and the Mary Tyler Moore Show theme song “Love Is All Around”—released around this time as singles—further expanded the group’s musical palate.
Hüsker Dü became the first notable American post-punk band to take the dive into major label waters after jumping ship from SST in 1986. By the next decade, former SST labelmates Sonic Youth, Soundgarden and Dinosaur, Jr. would take the plunge as well (for better and for worse). Their Warner debut Candy Apple Grey was a melancholy affair, and it featured a larger proportion of piano and/or acoustic guitar-driven tracks than previous releases. Nevertheless, blistering songs like “Crystal” hardly primed this album to become a smash hit, though it was the band’s first to crack the Billboard Top 200. Hüsker Dü broke up after releasing 1987’s Warehouse: Songs and Stories, just as they were on the cusp of breaking through to a larger audience.
Phase Two: The Early Solo Years
Bob Mould’s first two solo albums—1989’s Workbook and 1990’s Black Sheets of Rain—had many high points (for starters, check out the infectious single “See a Little Light”). But they were a bit uneven. The appropriately-titled Black Sheets of Rain is too dirge-y for my tastes, but the power-poppin’ “Out of Your Life” and “Disappointed” still never fail to satisfy. If these two albums had been edited down into one disc, the songs certainly would have yielded the first classic of his solo discography. This was not to be, but what came next was one hell of a consolation prize.
http://youtu.be/dDnNr6lNxvc
Phase Three: Sugar
I still remember seeing Sugar in a tiny club a few months before the band released their debut album, Copper Blue. Good god, they were loud. Having never heard any of Mould’s new material—this was pre-Internet, remember—I could barely make out a discernable song beneath the din, but the stick-to-the-roof-of-your-brain melodies still bubbled to the surface. With Sugar, Mould returned to the same rock trio format that made Hüsker Dü a creative success, with the added bonus of commercial success as well! They followed Copper Blue with the six track Beaster EP, a darker and more dissonant record (despite being recorded during the same sessions). File Under: Easy Listening beat the sophomore album slump, but the band nevertheless disbanded in 1995.
Phase Four: The Remaining Solo Years
I don’t mean to give the short shrift to the many albums Bob Mould released since Sugar called it quits, but my Little Village editors promised to torture me, mutilate my body and dump it in the Iowa River if I went over my 1,000 word limit. Although I loyally continued to buy his solo albums, Mould began to lose me starting in the late-1990s. In fact, he himself sounded bored with his own shtick (1996’s Bob Mould featured the song “I Hate Alternative Rock,” and the title of his next album, The Last Dog and Pony Show, sounds more than a bit jaded). Many songs from those two albums were somewhat same-y, though in retrospect some worthy gems can be found if you dig hard enough.
Mould countered his boredom by embracing electronic dance music on one-off projects like Blowoff, regular DJ gigs and on 2002’s Modulate. This was a bit of a left turn, even for his most musically open-minded fans (including me … sorry Bob!). The three solo albums that followed—Body of Song, District Line and Life and Times—found him progressively working his way back into a more familiar songwriting formula. This arc culminated in last year’s Silver Age, which might as well be subtitled How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love My Legacy. On his best album in years, Mould rocks like a hurricane while making his guitar gently weep.
A teenaged Kembrew McLeod drew the accompanying charcoal picture of Bob Mould in 1989, from a long-forgotten magazine photo. Immediately afterwards, for no good reason, he quit drawing (until his son Alasdair recently inspired him to start again).
