Andy Chase

DISCLAIMER: If there's one thing I can't stand, it's people who write crap album reviews on their websites (or Amazon.com). More often than not a self-styled reviewer will take a song or album by one of their favorite artists personally when they don't like it. Or at the opposite end of the spectrum, they'll have nothing to say but "Dude, Thermous RAWKS!!!!" I'm trying to keep these things that annoy me in mind here, but when all is said and done, I'm just some shmuck whose web site you found when searching for 'Bob Mould' and/or 'Modulate'.



Bob Mould is probably best known (by those who know him at all) as the guitarist/vocalist of the seminal 80's Punk/Pop band H?sker D?, but although I dimly remember seeing promotional posters for Candy Apple Grey at record stores in the late 80's the first time I heard anything by Bob Mould was the fall of 1994, when Sugar's last regular studio album, File Under: Easy Listening was released. I was living in the dorms then, and my neighbor played the disc constantly. The first track, Gift, had me hooked the first time I heard it, and after that there was no turning back... I soon owned all of Sugar's recordings, and once again found myself lamenting my poor timing; I never got to see them live.



Seven years after my first exposure, I would say that Sugar is still just about my favorite band of all time. Never was there a more perfect balance between ass-kicking rock and pop sensibility. As I began to explore H?sker D? and Bob's Mould's earlier solo albums, it became clear that that ass-kicking/pop thing is something he really excels at.



The first time I saw Bob Mould in concert was at a solo show he did at the Water Street Music Hall (The bar formerly known as the Horizontal Boogie Bar) in Rochester, NY. The man rocked the house with nothing more than an acoustic guitar and the same ferocious energy that can be heard on the live H?sker D? album The Living End, and on the live bonus disc The Joke Is Always on Us, Sometimes that came with early copies of Besides.



So, I reacted with sadness and consternation when he announced in 1998 that he was through with the electric band thing he had been doing for the better part of 20 years. Fortunately, I caught the Los Angeles leg of the Last Dog and Pony Show tour, and to my amazement one of my fondest wishes came true - I got to see Bob play Man on The Moon live, with a band. (He began to play it as an encore at the acoustic show, but stopped after breaking a couple of strings. And no, I'm not talking about the REM song about Andy Kaufmann.)



One of the tracks on the second half of the 1998 album, Megamanic, gave some indication of the direction in which Bob was heading. It wasn't my favorite tune on the album, but I didn't write it off as crap the way many fans and critics did. I would much rather see a favorite artist move in the directions that interest them than stagnate or adapt to the musical zeitgeist of the times the way KISS and Alice Cooper did in the 80's.



Which brings me, of course, to the new album, Modulate. It came out today, and I picked up a copy on my way home. I'm on my second listen as I write this, and I'm still trying to find my way into it; I'm not an electronica fan, so I can't really speak to Modulate's merits as an electronica album. Although the ass-kicking element is largely absent, Bob's familiar, comfortable songwriting isn't. In a way, that's probably one of the things I'm getting hung up on; my immediate inclination is to imagine each track as it would have sounded had Sugar recorded it. Long-time fans take note: The electric guitar becomes much more of a presence a few tracks in, and makes things a little more accessible. I think this is probably by design.



This is going to be one of those albums that I like better each time I listen to it; as I said, I'm all for a favorite artist doing something they're really into, even if it's not something I'm into. Modulate demands to be listened to on its own terms, and I hope that people who actually review albums for a living are willing to do that.