Bob Mould - Silver Age/Beauty & Ruin/Patch the Sky

Twenty years ago, Bob Mould put out a record called The Last Dog and Pony Show.  At the time he put it out, he mused that the tour to support this album would be his last time out with a loud electric band.  At the time, the loud rock guitar trio thing was something he had been doing for 20 years and he thought it was time to think about doing other things.  He enjoys the “loud guitar thing” but he didn’t want it to become a parody.  He was 38 then, and he didn’t want to look forward to being like Neil Young when he was 50.  In that, he meant the acoustic shows were something beautiful, but he wasn’t sold on the work with Crazy Horse.  Playing the loud guitar music and jumping around was “a young man’s game” and he didn’t want to be that guy when he was 50.  He didn’t know whether he would be concentrating on solo acoustic performances or “something else”. 

We got a hint of that “something else” from inside The Last Dog and Pony Show [with Megamanic] – electronic music.  He discovered while making that “song” he had fun in the studio, something that usually eluded him.  His next album was full of dance and electronic “music” [Modulate].  Some people liked it, but most didn’t [including me].  It was around this same time that Bob Mould finally came to grips with being gay, and in his memoir See a Little Light, he wrote that "In order to have a new life, I had to have new music."  And so he did.  Whether or not he wanted to be like Neil Young, there is a parallel in that Neil also made music in the 1980s that didn’t endear himself with his fan base [electronic music (Trans), 1950s retro (Everybody’s Rockin’), and country (Old Ways)].  At least Bob Mould didn’t get sued by his own record company for not being himself.

Something happened with See a Little Light.  He unburdened himself of a lot of stuff, stuff that would take an entire other blog post to explain.  One would say the experience of writing the book was cathartic.  He found himself and actually started to like himself and his lifestyle.  So with much of his own personal turmoil behind him, he also found two musicians with whom enjoyed working - bassist Jason Narducy and drummer Jon Wurster.  He was back in a power trio format, just like Hüsker Dü and Sugar.  He was back in the loud electric band format he swore off in 1998, and I am happier for it.  He’s in his fifties, playing the loud guitar music that he decried as a “young man’s game”.  Maybe 52 is the new 38.

In 2012 he released Silver Age, which to these ears sound a lot like what Sugar would be doing today if they hadn’t broken up in 1996.  This is a good thing, especially when one considers what that band did with Copper Blue and Beaster.  Silver Age brings back the Bob Mould of old – melodic punk-pop with doses of introspection.  There’s no sin in sounding like one’s self [AC/DC and Motðrhead did it all the time], unless you’re John Fogerty.  He isn’t reliving past glories; he’s just doing what he does best.  The volume is turned up, but the rage, while still there, is toned down ["I'm never too old to contain my rage”].  He need not have worried that his music sounded like it was played by an “old man”.  On the contrary, the young ones could still learn something from Bob Mould.  He took one lyrical shot at the American Idol generation.  Star Machine was his way of telling those folks that if they don’t like being pop stars, then they should stop being pop stars.  Mould once described Silver Age as a “party record.  Who am I to argue?  It sounds like he's enjoying himself for once.

He followed Silver Age with Beauty & Ruin [2014] and Patch the Sky [2016].  He told Rolling Stone in 2014 “I’ve realized that one of my strengths as a songwriter is writing very catchy songs with very down lyrics.  People enjoy it. I enjoy it. It seems to be one of those things that I do regularly and do well. That kind of contrast is important to me.”  So it is with Beauty & Ruin.  The album has four main themes - loss, reflection, acceptance and the future.  Not long after the release of Silver Age, his father died.  He had a complicated relationship with his father.  He was an alcoholic who beat Bob’s mother and older brother, and who also played mind games with his sister.  For some reason, Bob didn’t get such treatment from the abusive father, but he refused to accept his son’s homosexuality.  He entered a “rough patch” following his father’s death.  Again, he told Rolling Stone –

“I’m getting to that point in my life, where I’ve been losing people and people are getting really sick around me.  It’s weird. It can be a downer, but it can also be very enlightening. I’m very grateful that I’m in a line of work where now that I’ve stayed around long enough, sadly I get this perspective. It’s not a popular one in rock music.”

Patch the Sky mines similar lyrical territory.  Between the release of Beauty & Ruin and Patch the Sky, Mould’s mother died.  On top of that, Mould found himself single again.  With the turmoil of those events, Mould locked himself away for six months to write the songs for Patch the Sky.  As he told one interviewer not too long ago:

“I wrote alone for six months. I love people, but I needed my solitude. The search for my own truth kept me alive. These songs are my salvation.  I’m being very upfront. I’ve had a lot of loss in the last handful of years, and contrasting that with all the critical acclaim and this sort of resurgence – I mean, best of times in public, worst of times in private. As opposed to trying to hide the content of the record, it’s like, ‘Here. It’s a dark record. I went through a dark period. I felt very isolated. I took six months away from the excitement of life to sit and contemplate the meaning of the rest of my life, and here it is.’  That’s the good news with Patch the Sky, is that instead of weighing down these dark emotions with dark tempos and dark melodies, to have that contrast and be aware of it as I’m writing the music and words – that was nice that it unfolded that way.”

That has been Bob Mould’s stock-in-trade for many years – catchy songs with not-so-catchy lyrics.  He tends to bury his voice in the mix, so even if the words are a bummer, listening to the songs doesn’t make you want to slit your wrists.  Beneath the catchy pop songs, there is depth if you want to take the time to find it.  He tends to write about himself, and usually that “self” is less than happy.  It’s not his way to hold a mirror to the world and rail against hypocrisy – that’s what we have Roger Waters for.  If you want “angry Bob Mould”, go listen to Hüsker Dü.  Pete Townshend once said that rock and roll won’t solve your problems, but it will let you dance all over them.  Bob Mould’s music is his way of dancing on his problems.  Although his works are postcards from the dark side of emotion, it’s still nice to hear from an old friend.  He’s a good rhythm guitarist [and a very fast one when the mood strikes], an “OK” singer, and [in his words] a simple lyricist.  But what is evident is that he’s in his comfort zone with two bandmates who he wants to work as long as they want to work with him.  Who needs the Foo Fighters when you have Bob Mould?

Bob Mould’s next album, Sunshine Rock, will be available February 9^th, the title track of which has already been released digitally.  The album cover will be familiar to most folks over the age of 50 – it’s the Orange and Yellow swirl of the 45s put out by Capitol Records.  If I was going to guess what this album will sound like, I’ll go out on a limb and say “Pet Sounds with guitars”, but it’s happy.  It sounds like more of what you get with Silver Age, Beauty & Ruin, and Patch the Sky [with an orchestral twist], and hopefully the rest of the album follows that vein.  Bob Mould is in a late-career resurgence, and I highly recommend checking out what he’s done since that resurgence began in 2012.

Sugar - Copper Blue/Beaster

Nirvana came along at a good time.  The 1980s were full of hair metal bands that were just lame.  Nevermind got rid of all that hairspray in a hurry [thank whatever god you pray to].  In Nevermind’s wake came a band called Sugar [Bob Mould – guitar, keyboards, David Barbe – bass, Malcolm Travis – drums, percussion].  This has a bit of symmetry to it, because both Kurt Cobain and Dave Grohl expressed undying love for punk legends Hüsker Dü [of which Bob Mould was a songwriter, guitarist, and singer].  Hüsker Dü split up in 1987, but to me Sugar was the next best thing.  Hearing Copper Blue was like hearing an exiled king reclaiming the throne that was rightly his.  To wit, Copper Blue is the best-selling album of Bob Mould’s career.  It didn’t sell by the truckload like Nevermind, but not many albums have changed the landscape of pop music, either.  It did sell over 250,000 copies in Europe, and was named Album of the Year (1992) by the UK’s New Music Express.

How did Sugar come together?  In 1992, Bob Mould had no manager, no record label, and no band.  Drummer Malcolm Travis played for a band called The Zulus, the last record of which Bob Mould produced.  When The Zulus split up, Travis was available, and Mould gave him a call.  Bassist David Barbe [who now produces the Drive-By Truckers] played with an Athens-based punk band called Mercyland and was a mutual acquaintance of Bob Mould and his significant other.

How did Sugar get its name?  The explanation is the three guys in the band were sitting in a Waffle House, saw a packet of sugar on the table and decided “let’s call it this!”

What is Copper Blue?  It’s an essential collection of hooks, riffs, and beautiful melodies married to dark melancholic subject matter.  There are plenty of stunning, power punk masterpieces contained therein.  Clearly, Bob Mould learned from 1960s pop as well as 1980s punk [who ironically learned a lot from Hüsker Dü].  The production is top-notch.  Hüsker Dü’s records sounded like crap.  The drums were tinny at best; vocals were buried in the mix; you couldn’t hear the bass; it was an undefined, messy blur.  Not so with Sugar.  You can [for the most part] comprehend what Bob Mould is singing. The drum sound is huge.  The acoustic guitars cut through the mixes like a diamond.  Sugar’s rhythm section is much superior than any that Bob Mould played with before.  The guitar sound on Copper Blue is thick and abrasive and endless.  The guitars are even louder, but the separation of instruments is clearer, and Sugar the pop band is even more evident.  The songs are very melodic and there are hooks aplenty.  They sound happy, but beneath the happy exterior things aren’t quite so joyous.  There are songs about breakups, murder, car wrecks, death and maybe suicide [depending on how you look at that one].  There is not a bad song in the bunch.  There are a few songs which immediately grab my attention:

The Act We Act

The first eight bars with just Bob Mould’s chugging, distorted riffage sets the tone for Copper Blue.  After the first eight bars, Malcolm Davis’ beefy drums make their entrance.  Then Bob starts to sing, and to my surprise the vocals aren’t buried in the mix.  The topic here is a relationship coming to its end - the act we act is wearing thin

A Good Idea

This is an homage to The Pixies.  The subject – the drowning of a girl in a river because she said it was a good idea.  I saw them from the ocean / She didn’t seem to mind / Didn’t fight at all / She didn’t fight it at all…  That's a good idea/She said she said/That's a good idea/ She said…Dark humor, anyone?

Hoover Dam – Bob Mould’s love for ‘60s pop is evident here, from the Good Vibrations beginning, the backwards guitar solos a la George Harrison in the middle, and the psychedelic Tomorrow Never Knows ending.  In the twenty-two years since its release, Hoover Dam has become one of Bob’s most beloved songs.  The opening lyrics set the table immediately –

Standing on the edge of the Hoover Dam

I'm on the center line, right between two states of mind
And if the wind from the traffic should blow me away…

What two states of mind does he mean – between sanity and insanity, life or death?  Is this a suicide song?  Bob said it could be taken that way, but he calls it a good travelogue song because it hops all over the place – Hoover Dam, the Mississippi River, New Orleans, carousels, getting covered in lava, getting sucked into the center of the Earth, etc.  Hoover Dam is poppy, it’s trippy, and it’s a damn good song.

The Slim – coming immediately after the pop psychedelia that is Hoover Dam is this grim meditation on AIDS.  This is told from the point of view of someone who has lost a partner to the disease. Remember, this was during a time when an AIDS diagnosis was a death sentence.  Chances of survival from this disease were “slim.”  “The Slim” was the gay community’s name for AIDS.

If I Can’t Change Your Mind

This is a breakup song with a happy melody.  Such is Bob Mould’s music – a dichotomy between light and dark.  This is a twelve-string homage to The Byrds.  Some reviewers hear The Beatles – I hear The Byrds.

Slick

How does one feel after a car crash?  Listen here and find out.  I can’t put my finger on why I like this one so much, I just like it.  Maybe because the sound is disorienting, kind of like its subject matter.  Slick has the same vibe as The Slim.

Changes and Helpless

Both songs were singles from the album.  They’re pretty much the same theme as If I Can’t Change Your Mind.  These are good, short pop songs with buzz-saw guitars.

The songs for Beaster were recorded during the same sessions as Copper Blue.  But Bob Mould knew this set of songs was different than the pop songs, so he ‘quarantined’ them away from the Copper Blue songs.  He and his bandmates even joked that perhaps the pop songs should be labeled ‘Sugar’ and the Beaster songs as ‘Spice.’  Copper Blue [released in September 1992] sold very well, and only seven months later they unleashed Beaster [on Easter Sunday 1993] on an unsuspecting public while they were still hot.  The Beaster songs have more layers of buzz-saw guitars, they’re [for the most part] faster, and they definitely sound angry.  As Bob tells it, the words for these songs came pouring out of him after a telephone conversation with his partner that didn’t go very well.  There’s religious imagery sprinkled throughout, but the words are so vague I can’t tell what exactly he means.  But given the frenetic pace of the music, Bob Mould is one extremely pissed-off human being.   While Copper Blues has melodies galore, Beaster is just brutal.  Between the beginning and the end of Beaster is venomous, spleen-venting rage.  

Come Around

Beaster begins with an ‘instrumental’ that lulls the listener into a false sense of security.  Bob chants ‘come around’ over and over again like a mantra, buried in the mix [hence the quotation marks around ‘instrumental’].  Once you’re almost lulled to sleep by Come Around, the band sucker punches you with Tilted.

Tilted

It’s a good thing there’s a lyric sheet included because I can’t understand what Bob is singing.  Even with the lyric sheet the meaning escapes me.  But which is faster – the drums, the guitars, or the vocals?  The answer: yes – it’s a race.  It’s like hearing a better-recorded version of Hüsker Dü, not that there’s anything wrong with that.  It’s ferocious, fast, and exhilarating.  I don’t know how Malcolm Travis keeps up this punishing pace.   This song begins 23 minutes of unrelenting pummeling of the listener into submission.

Judas Cradle

More angry guitars, more religious imagery.  A ‘Judas cradle’ refers to an Inquisition-era torture device [the ‘Judas chair’].  Was Bob going to introduce the object of his ire to the Judas cradle?  One gets the idea he’s pissed-off enough to do just that.  The whole idea of this device was to lower an individual slowly onto the chair, with the point inserted into either the anus or vagina, and let gravity do the rest.

The Copper Blue/Beater package includes four B-sides [all of which could be found on the post-breakup release “Besides”].  Needle Hits E is the best of the bunch.  How it never made it to the original Copper Blue release, I’ll never know.  This package also includes a recording of a complete Sugar concert from Chicago.  It’s not essential listening, but it’s nice to hear what these guys sounded like live.

JC Auto

Part of “JC Auto” [short for “Jesus Christ Autobiography”] has the melody from the chorus of Poison Years, the bit that says "Treason is the reason for my poison years…"  So we have a clue that JC Auto, like Poison Years, is about betrayal.  Bob said as much in his autobiography.  But somebody out there in cyberspace [who is much more clever than I] went a little further and looked at these words from JC Auto - "Somewhere in this song/ A little clue to something (clue to something)/Parts of it seem over now/You expect a real solution" = Poison Years.   So when Bob sings [over and over again] “I'm your Jesus Christ I know...”, what does he mean?  Is he a messiah or a martyr?  My guess is that Bob is playing the martyr card.  He also sings “You'll be sorry when I'm gone…”, is he singing about leaving a relationship, or just ending his life altogether?

Feeling Better

Bob is hoping someone is feeling better – wash, rinse, repeat.  It’s got a great guitar riff with some cheesy synthesizer thrown on top.  The mood has lightened but it still feels a bit crazed.

Walking Away

After the stürm and drang that was the previous four songs, Beater comes in for a soft landing with Walking Away.  As Bob sings I’m walking away back to you… the only instrumental accompaniment is a celestial church organ.  And so it ends, with one asking “what the hell just happened?”

Unfortunately, Sugar had only one more album in them [File Under:  Easy Listening (FU:EL)] before calling it quits in 1995.  David Barbe felt like an absentee dad and wanted to spend more time at home.  The whole package of Copper Blue/Beaster ranks with Bob Mould’s best work [Hüsker Dü’s Zen Arcade and New Day Rising, his solo Workbook].  They’re a sonic onslaught full of melodies with a lot of angst and a little primal scream therapy thrown in for good measure.

Caveat emptor – this sucker is LOUD!  The remastering job boosted the volume on Copper Blue/Beaster, but without the clipping and distortion on hears from albums recorded during the “loudness wars.”  During the original recording of these works, there was an equipment alignment problem, which made it sound like most of the sound was coming through the right channel.  The remasters fixed that problem – there is proper stereo balance to the sound where there wasn’t before.

Bottom line – essential!

Bob Mould: Workbook

Once upon a time there was a punk band from Minneapolis. Their name - Hüsker Dü. They were Bob Mould [guitar, vocals], Grant Hart [drums, vocals], and Greg Norton [bass, vocals]. Bob Mould and Grant Hart wrote the songs. Their sound was equal parts distortion, feedback, extreme volume, and speed. Their first album Land Speed Record consisted of 17 songs spread out over a whopping 26 1/2 minutes. (!) Bob Mould once remarked Land Speed Record was "the bad part of the acid...It sounds like when you go to a gig and get your ears blown off." Hüsker Dü soon acquired the tag of "hardcore punk." After Everything Falls Apart and the EP Metal Circus, Hart and Mould became better songwriters, and beginning with Zen Arcade Hüsker Dü would try anything - pop songs, tape experiments, acoustic songs, pianos, noisy psychedelia. Both Hart and Mould developed a dependency on alcohol and speed. Mould sobered up, but Hart drifted into heroin addiction. As a result, tensions between Mould and Hart began to rise. In 1987, the night before they were to tour in support of the double-album Warehouse: Songs and Stories, Hüsker Dü manager David Savoy committed suicide. Mould took over the management responsibilities, and Hart slid further into heroin addiction, thus adding to the vibe of doom between the two. After the Warehouse tour, Hüsker Dü dissolved amidst much acrimony. It was quite the painful split. Mould chalks the breakup to "not liking each other very much" and "not liking each others' songs." They recorded seven albums and an EP in five years, and crammed in tours between each of the albums. They fell victim to the album-tour-album-tour treadmill.

After Hüsker Dü's split in 1988, Bob Mould moved into a Minnesota farmhouse and woodshed with his acoustic guitar for months. During his woodshed time he came up with the songs that became his debut solo album, Workbook.

In an interview in 2009 with musician Tom Goss, Bob Mould said of Workbook:

"That record was a big departure from what I'd ever done before. Compositionally, it was a lot more poetry and free verse, non-rhyming structure, the sort of narratives, sort of found images that would collide when I put them together. Sort of a real unconscious way of writing as opposed to ''I need to find a word that rhymes with this.'"

He wasn't kidding. Nothing says "I'm free" from a previous band than to change the sound radically.. Workbook, released in 1989, starts with an acoustic instrumental called Sunspots. Most of Workbook is acoustic, with touches of cello and mandolin thrown in for good measure. If you want to find a blueprint for Workbook, look no further then Mould's Hardly Getting Over It from Hüsker Dü's Candy Apple Grey. The gentle strains of acoustic guitars, whispered vocals from Bob Mould with a melancholy melody from Hardly Getting Over It [itself a depature for Hüsker Dü] are all over Workbook. The electric guitar makes itself known in a few of places: Wishing Well, Poison Years [which on the surface sounds like Mould's lamentation on the Hüsker Dü experience], and the finale Whichever Way the Wind Blows. Workbook doesn't have the Hüsker Dü wall of noise. Mould actually sings the songs instead of screaming them. Workbook derives its heaviness not from any loud music but from the angst contained in the lyrics, to wit:

Used to be that a handshake was a man's word
But now we settle arguments in court
No one trusts anyone's intentions anymore...
[Compositions for the Young and Old]

Why every time you knock me down
It's all that I can do to get up off the ground, pull myself apart again
At the end of this rope, rope at the end of the line
I see you swing by your neck on a vine
[Poison Years]

Cheap thrills are awful hard to find these days
No one is amused for free
Someone's pulling on your mama's apron strings
You'd better run and see who it is
[Compositions for the Young and Old]

As the years go by, they take their toll on you
Well, think of all the things we wanted to do
And all the words we said yesterday
Well, that's a long time ago
[See a Little Light]

All those things I've done before
It doesn't matter anymore
I see the errors of my oh-so-humble ways
Better run before
There's no way that i can cover for
All these things catch up to me
We've all sinned before
I have sinned before
[Sinners and Their Repentances]

See a Little Light is a brilliant little pop gem. Songs like Dreaming, I Am and Heartbreak a Stranger are almost a whisper [compared to Hüsker Dü anyway...]. The tunes are extremely well written, and the guitar playing is flawless. My favorite is Poison Years. There's so much venom and vitriol there. The music matches the mood. If you are going to own any music Bob Mould made after Hüsker Dü, Workbook is the one to have. It's brilliant!

Also recommended: Sugar - Copper Blue


Poison Years