IN REVIEW: Bob Mould - "Beauty & Ruin"

When Bob Mould released Silver Age in 2012, it took fans by surprise; after all, it had been a long time since Mould rocked out with such purpose. Silver Age wasn't just a pleasant batch of songs for someone his age, it was a legitimately great rock album for a man of any age. That Beauty & Ruin largely follows the same template is welcome news, of course, but I was skeptical of how well the album would play absent the element of surprise.

As it turns out, Beauty & Ruin puts its biggest surprise right out front; Low Season rides in on a wave of dissonant fuzz before blooming into a dark, moody ballad with a Beatlesque-as-filtered-through-Oasis melody and substantial emotional weight. It's a sullen, mournful song that would have been a momentum killer anywhere else on the album. Here, it gets the darkness out of the way in order to move on. The song ends, the veil lifts, and we're off and running.

The remaining eleven tracks play out in much the same way as Silver Age, a mix of energetic rockers and celebratory power pop. It's hard to beat Little Glass Pill, Kid With Crooked Face and album closer Fix It in terms of intensity when you're closing in on 54. These tracks burn hot and do damage, quick bursts that out-slug anything on Silver Age.

The War closes out the album's A-side in a glorious hail of Foo Fighters distortion and melody as influenced heavily by Mould himself. Fire In The City visits the Foos' Times Like These to send Hüsker Dü's regards. And if you've heard lead single I Don't Know You Anymore you've heard the album's most effectively enjoyable power-pop, a ballistic Sugar bomb aimed and executed with precision.

The album does stumble occasionally, and Mould's vision misses the mark. There's surely nothing wrong with enjoying Dookie-era Green Day, but Hey Mr. Grey strikes just a little too close in structure and sound. And penultimate track/quasi-title track Let The Beauty Be's intentions are pure, but the sluggish acoustic strumming and lazy doo-doos that end the track only serve to bog it down and drag it out. Likewise, the finger snapping and doo-doos that introduce Nemeses Are Laughing are off-putting by themselves, and are a head-scratching intro to an otherwise likable song (that puts the same doo-doos to better use later in the song anyway). These gripes are mere distractions, true, but they're noticeable enough to cut off the album's flow, hurting its cohesiveness and lessening the overall impact. This is especially true of Let The Beauty Be, as it sucks the life out of the album directly before one of its liveliest songs.

That all said, there aren't any terrible songs on Beauty & Ruin, though a few are somewhat misguided. By and large, it's just as enjoyable as Silver Age with more hits than misses, more beauty than ruin. And the album's best moments are way better than its worst moments are bad. Which I suppose, after 35 years in the business and some twenty albums spread across solo and band discographies, is a bigger victory than guys like me will give it credit for.

June 3, 2014 • Merge

Highlights Little Glass Pill • I Don't Know You Anymore • The War

Year in Rock 2025

Alright, I've got some explaining to do. By now anyone who's visited this blog is well aware of how infrequently I've used this space in recent years; aside from the occasional fertile year of content, I really haven't posted all that often over the last five years or so. There are many reasons for this, which have already been outlined in previous apology posts; but, essentially, it boils down to my own laziness and the cold reality that blogs are, like Refused (again), fucking dead. So, I wouldn't hold my breath for a triumphant return to reviews, or even semi-regular posts, but: a) I feel like Year in Rock posts have always belonged here and, even though I've experimented with different methods of presentation recently and been satisfied, the "blink and you missed it" unveiling via Facebook stories this year was perhaps ultimately a disservice to the records I lauded. After all, cramming the list into short videos isn't too far off from ju...

Year in Rock 2011 Nominee: Sam Roberts Band

SAM ROBERTS BAND I Feel You From: Collider Released: May 10 Having already endured the breakout success ( Brother Down was Canada's it rock song of 2002), the tentative dabbling in the U.S. market, as is the rite of passage for all moderately successful Canuck artists (2003's debut We Were Born in a Flame was the best time to try; one of the best albums of the year, it made a small dent in the American mindset upon its release there a year later), the difficult, druggy third album (the aptly named 2005 disc Chemical City ), and the subdued creative step backward (2008's Love at the End of the World , aside from hit single Them Kids , was really kinda bland), it seems according to script that Sam Roberts would start settling in on his fourth album (and first with the band credited as equal contributors), Collider (you know, I think it was a bad idea to give me brackets). Well, as far as settling in goes, Roberts does and doesn't on Collider . W...

IN REVIEW: Rancid - "Trouble Maker"

As far as punk rock goes, it's hard to name a hotter hot streak than the trio of records Rancid cranked out between 1995 and 2000; the star making ...And Out Come the Wolves , the far-reaching Life Won't Wait and their balls-to-the-wall second self-titled album solidly positioned Rancid as leaders of the second generation of punk. It also preceded a period of slow progression, as Rancid would take eleven years to release their next three records. By the time ...Honor Is All We Know came in 2014, many fans (myself included) had to wonder whether or not this was the end of the road. Such concerns are handily dealt with on the closing track of the standard edition of their ninth record, the positively punishing This Is Not the End . Well, okay then, that's sorted. Now, what of this new record? What do we make of the use of their original logo on the cover, a logo that hasn't graced a Rancid record in 25 years? Is this a throwback to the band's heyday, a new begin...

SOUND BITES

Search This Blog