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