Over the past few years, a new Bob Mould album has been cause not for celebration, but for concern. My first introduction to Mould was through Sugar’s Copper Blue album, a collection of catchy melodies and rock-hard riffs that cemented, in my mind, Mould’s status as the great-uncle of alternative rock. I enjoyed the raggedness of Hüsker Dü and the acoustic solo album Workbook; his 1996 self-titled album remains one of my favorites of all time.
But recently, I have been put off by his move toward electronica. While his last album was good, I found myself listening to it a few times and then not going back to it. So although I marked the release date of District Line on my calendar, I didn’t even buy the download until the end of the week.
I shouldn’t have waited. District Line is many things for Bob Mould: a return to form, an embrace of new musical ideas, and a demonstration of his relatively new-found comfort in his own skin. The first track, “Stupid Now,” begins with a single strummed electric guitar and Mould’s voice higher in the mix than he has ever allowed it before. “Please listen to me, and don’t disagree / Even as we fight, it doesn’t matter to me,” he sings, before drums, synthetic strings, and bass signal that the song is going to build and build to its rousing, angry chorus: “Everything I say to you feels stupid now / The feelings that I shared with you are over now.” Guitars crunch, cymbals crash, harmonies abound. This is the Bob Mould I grew to love so many years ago.
Subsequent tracks highlight the good. Acoustic rockers like “Who Needs To Dream?” combine Workbook-style guitars with some of Mould’s new electronics. “Old Highs, New Lows” is a ballad that would have fit nicely beside File Under: Easy Listening’s “Believe What You’re Saying.” On the final cut, “Walls in Time,” his voice cracks and breaks in ways that he has never allowed it to before. (Finally, we can hear the Bob Mould who we always wanted to hear.) Some songs are a bit uninteresting—“Very Temporary” is not nearly as catchy as it should be—and Mould relies too much on Auto-Tune on many of the tracks. However, District Line is an album that should allow fans of Bob Mould in any of his incarnations to breathe a sigh of relief. |